


Blood of the Chosen

by trashbinofdestiny



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, M/M, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-11-30 21:05:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 20,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11471655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trashbinofdestiny/pseuds/trashbinofdestiny
Summary: A werewolf AU from the kinkmeme:Ardyn Lucis Caelum is the immortal king of Lucis, living in solitude off the coast of Cape Caem while the noble line continues in Insomnia. In the rare case that omegas are born to the Caelum house, they are betrothed to Ardyn, whose powerful magic and cursed immortality ensures that the blood of the line does not wear thin.Noctis is the twenty-third omega to be born since the start of the arrangement. When the time comes for him to come to Caem, he finds that despite the inexplicable pull he feels between himself and the immortal king, he is not at peace in the home of his ancestors. Ardyn is hard to pin down, there are too many places where Noctis is forbidden to go, and there’s something disquieting about the cheery, bright-eyed servants who roam the grounds…





	1. Chapter 1

Noctis Lucis Caelum is fourteen when he first sees the man he’s meant to marry. 

The hallway behind the Citadel throne room has so many pillars that it looks like a forest of marble, mottled grey against speckled black and green tile. There are paintings in the gaps between each pillar, and Noctis knows most of them by heart. He drums his fingers on the wrought gold frames as he passes, and stops before the center one. It’s so high that he has to crane his neck to see the top, and it features two wolves crouched before an oncoming sea, their fur midnight black, eyes gold as the sun that melts in the corner of the frame. The sea behind them is a sickening shade of blue-green, and there’s a face there: The goddess Etro, eyes closed as she draws the tide of death over the wolves on the shore.

It’s supposed to be a painting of the ancient King of Light. Ardyn Lucis Caelum, the man who consumed the curse of the Starscourge and found himself changed: Immortal, driven by magic and the blessing of the astrals, barred from the lands of death. An eternal king, watching over the royal line of Lucis from the shadows. The tide will crash over him, and he will be left standing. 

Noct never really liked that painting. When he was young, he used to hold his breath when he passed it, balking at the hunch in the wolves’ shoulders, the snarl of teeth and scrape of claw. Now, he forces himself not to look away, to stare into the larger wolf’s eyes and see nothing there but paint and oil. 

“His highness,” calls a woman’s voice, at the door of the throne room. “Noctis Lucis Caelum, Prince of Lucis, Heir to the Stone.”

“Noctis!” The pale, worried face of Ignis Scientia pokes out from behind the door. “What are you _doing?”_

Noct tears himself away from the painting and walks down the hall as the woman carries on, giving voice to every title he’s never earned. He reaches the door just as she finishes with: 

“Twenty-third omega of the line of Lucis.”

“Noctis, no,” Ignis whispers. Noct spares a glance into the room. It’s a blur of gold and cream and soft pastels, with two thrones and a smaller chair in the back. He can see his father in the highest throne, gaze level, posture perfect despite the pain in his lower back and legs. Beside him, a man Noct has only seen in old photos and portraits slumps on his chair like he can’t wait to escape, legs crossed at the ankle, one hand on his chin.

The crowd of people wait in the ringing silence of the herald’s last words.

Noctis passes by the open door, disappearing down the hall. A murmur rises up from the throne room behind him, and Ignis is already ducking into the hall to run at his heels, but Noctis doesn’t look back. 

He's known about the arrangement since before he could read: Omegas of Lucis are married to the immortal king to keep the bloodline pure, to ensure that the moon brings with it the inexorable pull of their blood, the shift from human to something more. The weaker noble families throw out only the occasional true lycanthrope once every two generations or so: The others are the common sort, whose changes are limited to nails, teeth, and strength, to a tendency to grow restless under the waxing moon.

Noctis doesn't change too often. It hurts a little, pops bones in his back that never healed quite right after an injury in his childhood. Some full moons, he locks himself away in the dark, curtains closed, and ignores the texts from his Shield to go running with him in the halls.

Ignis tells him that after he refused to enter the throne room, King Ardyn laughed so hard that he cried. Noctis considers this as his father gives him a lecture on snubbing two-thousand year-old legends, and thinks that next time, maybe it won’t hurt to say hello.

 

*

 

"What if I fall in love with someone else?" Noctis asks. He's sixteen, thrown headfirst into the surly, acne-ridden pit of teenage despair that overrides all sense of decorum. He's uncomfortable in his new dress suit, slouching impressively over the balcony railing of the Citadel ballroom, and his who knows how many times great uncle and betrothed, Ardyn Lucis Caelum, leans against a pillar and shrugs.

"Oh, it's happened before," he says. "Countless times."

Noct gives him a wary look. "But… in our line, if you’re _with_ someone, aren't you like... theirs? Forever?"

"If that were true," Ardyn says, sipping his champagne, "I would have taken a vow of chastity, oh... Nearly two thousand years ago." 

"It's kind of weird that you drop that shit into ordinary conversation," Noct points out.

"Really? I had no notion." Ardyn smiles. "Noctis, the arrangement between us is... A convenience. If I'm that unbearable, we can artificially inseminate you, you can have your tubes tied as soon as you've produced at least two heirs, and then you can be with whomever you like."

"Wow," Noct drawls. "Romantic."

"Isn't it, though? Why, has someone caught your eye?"

Noctis shrinks back. "No. I don't know."

"I can help you with courting rituals, if you like. I am, as you would say, swing to the, ah, groove of your generation's hizzle—"

"No one says that," Noctis says. "No one ever says that." 

Ardyn takes a deep breath. "Thank the gods. Keeping up with current trends can be a trial."

Noctis smiles a little, a rare glimpse of light in the stormcloud of puberty. "You're not unbearable, though," he says, after a minute. "Weird as hell, maybe, but not unbearable."

"I will carry such high praise in my heart forever," Ardyn says, and Noctis almost laughs. 

 

*

 

The wedding takes place when Noct is nineteen, in Ardyn's home by the cape. It's the site of the first great hall of Lucis, says Ignis, as the two of them sit in the front of a sleek black car and watch the low towers of the castle slide into view. It's rumored that Ardyn himself was first crowned there, back when he was as young as Noctis is now, unknowing of the long years to come. It's hard to imagine. The base of the great hall is still there, squat and stone and vaguely menacing against the cliffs of Caem, but additions have been made over the years in cheery, washed-out brick, wood paneling, and light stone. There are riotous gardens that wind in complex designs, a pool that weaves around a small hedge labyrinth, and what looks like a cottage at the edge of the sea.

"For you," Ignis says, when Noctis points it out. "Should you need privacy. His Majesty keeps the house in order, just in case the arrangement chafes."

"I don't think I'll need it," Noctis says. His phone buzzes: It’s his Shield, sending him a photo of the sea from a blurred, tilted perspective, complete with a red thumb mark in the corner.

Gladio will love Ardyn's home, Noct can tell. It looks like something out of one of the romance novels Gladio thinks he's cleverly hiding behind sports magazines, and Noct's pretty sure Gladio's already planning a camping trip on the beach. Prompto, one of his best men for the small ceremony, hasn't stopped taking pictures since the castle came into view, and is talking about what he'd like to do "next time."

Well. At least Noct won't be lonely.

Ardyn doesn't greet them at the door: Something about tradition. Noct, Ignis, Gladio and Prompto are ferried up into a tower room, where there are sandwiches on silver trays, all their suits laid out on hangers in a row, and a fat, ornery cat with a blind eye and half an ear gone who becomes Noctis' best friend within minutes. Noct sits on the counter with the cat in his lap while Ignis fusses over the minimal makeup needed to smooth out Noct's skin, running his hands through her soft fur. 

Noct's suit is such a deep black that it's almost blue, and there are crystal embellishments running up the sleeves and back like a fading night sky. He wears the crown of the prince of Lucis: A laurel made of silver lightning, delicate and sharp over his dark hair. Prompto cries. Gladio hits him on the back, and Ignis straightens his jacket, hands trembling.

"It's foolish, but I feel as though we're about to lose you," he says. Noct smiles.

"Never."

Regis appears at the door to tell them that they're running late, and takes his son by the arm. Noct wonders, briefly, whether his father feels any reluctance, sending Noct away until the line of Lucis is secure and Noct is ready to take his place as king. He wonders if Regis has noticed Noct's recent obsession with history, all the books he's checked out of the Citadel library, the rough outline of Ardyn's life that he's put together to set against the rare moments they've met in person. 

He wonders if the other omegas of Lucis dreamed about Ardyn like he does, woke with his name unspoken on their tongues. He remembers the house by the sea, and thinks not. 

He wonders if Ardyn ever dreams of him.

The ceremony is small: Only forty people or so, enough to fill the great hall. The hall is draped with flowers, which make the heavy blue ribbons over the roof beams sag. When Noct reaches the altar of the gods, Ardyn gestures up, and Noct cranes his neck to see a pyramid of glass directly overhead, shaped like a prism to cast rainbows of light over the ceiling. He grins, and Ardyn winks.

They take one another's hands, Prompto sobs loud enough to echo, and one of Ardyn's descendants, a distant cousin who gave Noct his dancing lessons, breaks into applause at Ardyn's side.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Be warned: There's some smut in this chapter.

The night drags on so long that the stars have nearly faded from the sky by the time Regis takes his leave. The exit of the current ruling king is the sign for guests to depart, filing out to guest rooms and hotels. Ardyn stays behind to speak to the cleaning staff, and Noct's friends walk him up the long, spiral stair to Ardyn's bedroom. They take a moment to admire the room itself: All gold leaf, soft black satin, paintings of landscapes lost to erosion and changes in climate. Then they dump the gift bags and boxes by the door and give their lingering goodbyes.

Noct goes to the window. It's one of the more modern additions to the castle, dark wood with carved vines rising up the sides, and he sits on it, unbuttoning his jacket as he watches the sea roll in the distance. 

The door opens. Ardyn is shaking his head at the pile of gifts as he unfastens his cape, which is a wispy thing of lace and silk roses. When he smiles at Noct, vaguely uncertain but genuine, Noct can see the portraits and engravings of the Citadel staring through him. 

"There's a room below mine," Ardyn says, "with a truly extravagant hot tub, if you don't wish to-"

"I do," Noct says, while Ardyn hangs up his cape on a hook. "I want to. Unless you don't?"

He does, Noctis knows. Ardyn is adept at keeping his scent muted, thousands of years of life having taught him more than modern science is only just discovering, but Noct can taste his interest in the air, the hint of curiosity and desire. Maybe it's him, he thinks. Noct has always been awful at hiding when he's excited or angry, and he's sure that his own yearning is radiating from him in waves.

Ardyn, unclasping a buckle on his vest, raises an eyebrow. "Of course. Is this your first time?"

Noct thinks about it. He's made out with people once or twice, maybe verged on the edge of what counts as proper behavior for someone betrothed at birth, but the bed suddenly feels like an unexplored country, mapped out only by bad porn and his doctor's clinical pamphlets.

"Um," he says.

"Oh," says Ardyn. "Um. I see. No fear, Noctis." There's a change in the air, a subtle twist to Ardyn's scent, and Noct feels desire pool in his belly so hot and tight that he aches. Ardyn's voice lowers. "Come to me, then."

A small part of Noct, the part that hasn't spent the past nineteen years being taught the importance of his station, wants to crawl on his hands and knees, bow his head at Ardyn's feet. He stands instead, stumbles forward, and drags himself up by the collar of Ardyn's robes to kiss him, full and deep and desperate.

Ardyn's hands are quicker than his, and Noct's wedding suit slides to the floor with a clink of crystals and the shush of silk. He struggles with Ardyn's collar and huffs when he's pushed back onto the bed so that Ardyn can unbutton it for him. He pushes aside the anxiety of Ardyn seeing him, naked and too pale and thin, and palms his cock through his briefs.

Ardyn has broad shoulders, fine curls of chest hair, arms made strong and thick through centuries with too much idle time. When Ardyn's fingers hook in Noct's briefs, yanking them down, Noct almost jabs him with his knee. He wants Ardyn, wants him over him. Wants to feel his thighs boxing him in, his shadow trapping him on the bed, his...

"Oh, gods," Noct says, when Ardyn is fully naked, climbing over him on the bed. He's heard of this before, seen enough porn to think himself desensitized, but the sight of Ardyn's length, hard and flushed, hanging between his legs, threatens to short circuit his mind. Noct grabs at him, bucking up from the bed, letting out an embarrassing keening whine as Ardyn's lips press over his neck.

"Careful," Ardyn says. "Don't lose yourself."

Noct, his nails digging into Ardyn's shoulders, feels something like the fizz of magic settling over his skin. It holds the frantic desperation at bay, close enough to make Noct pant for breath but not so strong that he's moaning at just the thought of a touch. He looks into Ardyn's eyes, and he sees understanding there. They kiss again, slower this time, and Noct closes his eyes to the feel of Ardyn's cock rutting against his hip as he moves, exploring Noct's body.

He talks, during, because of course he does. He tries for endearments as his expert fingers press and rake and twist at sensitive places Noct hadn't even been aware of before.

"Darling isn't your type," he says, when Noct moans outright at the sting of teeth on his inner thigh. His cock is weeping, flushed against his stomach, and his thighs close over Ardyn's head before they are gently pushed down again. 

"Dear went out of practice decades ago," Ardyn says, when his fingers over Noct's cockhead have him sobbing into the sheets. "But it has staying power. Sweetheart? No..."

"Fuck," Noct says, when a slick finger traces over his hole. "Fuck, just. Just fuck me, gods."

"I don't think I can call you _that,_ " Ardyn says, and Noct glares at him, sweating and on edge, wondering if he should just jerk himself off while Ardyn decides. His husband, the immortal King of Light, the man whose blood runs with so much magic that his skin sings with it, laughs at his own joke and pats Noctis on the thigh.

Before Noct can think of a response, two of Ardyn's fingers have entered him. The stretch is just enough to make him shiver beyond the burn, and Noct thinks, dimly, that Ardyn probably anticipated this. He probably knows Noct's body better than he does. 

"Precious?" Ardyn asks.

"Don't you fucking dare."

Ardyn smiles. "Pet?" Noct's cheeks flush dark, and Ardyn opens his mouth to the head of Noct's neglected cock. Noct whines again, and breaks into a staggered, hitching moan as Ardyn fucks him with his fingers, crooking to reach the spot that Noct has only found with the use of a well-hidden toy in the bottom of his dresser drawer back home.

He comes without warning, crying out in wordless pleasure. When the waves subside, he feels the heat of humiliation creep over him, and presses his face to the soft sheets of Ardyn's bed.

"Now, Noct," Ardyn says, inserting a third finger. Noct rocks down on it, slightly, an almost unconscious roll of his hips. "Don't be ashamed of a little enthusiasm. And I believe you might be able to go again."

He could, but he is still painfully aware that Ardyn hasn't come yet, hasn't even broken a sweat. And here Noct is with his hair a mess, his skin patchy with what looks more like a rash than the blush of a new groom, and his breath coming out in great gasps. 

Ardyn moves forward, and brushes Noct's chin with a free hand. Noct turns to him and sinks into another slow kiss, the fever that Ardyn's magic quelled boiling to the surface. He doesn't know how long they kiss, how slick he is between his thighs, how easily Ardyn can fit four fingers, before he's nipping at Ardyn's lower lip and begging for him in a voice that breaks.

"As you command, your highness," Ardyn says, and Noct feels his cock twitch between them. "Oh? Your highness?" Noct can feel the heat in his cheeks as Ardyn smiles down at him. 

Ardyn's cock presses against Noct's entrance, sliding in so easily that Noct thinks that time must have come undone, that he must have had hours, years, to prepare for this moment.

"My prince," Ardyn says, and Noct groans. Ardyn enters him slowly, every inch bringing Noct closer to becoming a hopeless, writhing wreck of nerves and desire. "Yes, highness, you're doing so well."

"Please," Noct sobs. "Please, Ardyn. _Majesty._ "

Ardyn kisses him on the cheek as he seats himself fully in Noctis, hands on Noct's shaking thighs. "Good boy," he says, and scrapes his teeth at the hollow of Noctis' neck, making him rock down, trying to draw him deeper. 

He's not nearly as rough as Noct wants him to be, but Noct is too far gone to even ask for more. He digs his hands into Ardyn's hair, runs a thumb over the stubble of his jaw, and when Ardyn kisses his fingers, Noctis holds them there, covering his mouth with one hand. 

His legs are starting to ache when he can feel the swell form at the base of Ardyn's cock, and he tries to pull Ardyn up by the shoulders to bring him deeper still. Ardyn shushes him, whispers in his ear, wraps an arm around the back of his head to hold him as he pushes through. Noct never knew he could feel so sensitive, like every cell in his body has been given over to the feeling, and he bares his neck to Ardyn, begging, tears in his eyes, nails curling in his hair.

"Not yet," Ardyn says, and another arm slides under Noct's shoulders. He's surrounded by Ardyn, by the heat of him, his scent, and when Ardyn comes at last, all Noct can think is that he's never felt so warm, or so comfortable, in his life. He comes a second time, lazily rocking into Ardyn's hand, and lets himself drift, the world beyond Ardyn going hazy and muted. He can hear Ardyn chuckle, feel a kiss on his forehead, and then he's gone at last, lost to sleep.

*

Noctis is used to sleeping alone. What he isn't used to is the stifling warmth of another man's body, smooth skin on his cheek, a weight on the mattress pulling him in. He isn't used to the scent of an alpha, overpowering now that he's so close to Ardyn's chest. He wakes several times in the night, breathless and wild-eyed, to clap a hand on the juncture between his shoulder and neck. Ardyn is silent beside him, arms locked around his shoulders, one leg draped over his. Noct is engulfed by him, drowning in him, and he lies awake in a light-headed daze for nearly an hour before he can drift off again. 

Once, Noct rolls over to find himself facing a great, towering darkness creeping over the edge of his vision. The only light comes from the slide of moonlight over yellow eyes, and the slick shine of teeth.

He clutches the sheets behind him and blindly reaches for his armiger. Then the darkness folds in on itself, and arms roll Noct back into Ardyn's side.

"Bad dreams?" Ardyn whispers. Noct stares over his shoulder at their shadows on the wall, grey and misshapen and ordinary, and shakes his head. 

When he wakes again, it's to the sound of laughter. He levers himself up on his elbows, looking up over the mound of blankets and comforters that Ardyn has left him in, and sees that the window facing the sea has been left open. Noct can smell the ocean, and the sharp scent of the wildflowers that hang outside the window. He rolls out of bed and limps over.

The laughing is coming from a couple of kids in one of the gardens. Noct is too high up to see their faces, but they look like they're about four or five, running between clothes lines while an older man straightens the pins. One of them lands in a bush, and Noct leans forward instinctively. The second child backs up, looks around, and plops down in the bush next to the first kid. The laughter starts up again, high and warbling.

"Oh dear."

Noct spins on his heel, and sees a young woman dressed all in blue, with a grey apron over her jeans. She's covering her eyes, and Noct realizes too late that he's still naked, and there's a definite stickiness to his thighs from the night before. He lunges for the black window curtains and wraps them around his middle.

"Your highness, I'm sorry," the woman says. She cranes her neck away from him, and Noct can see a smudge of darkness under her collar, like ash. "I thought you were in the aviary with their Majesties." 

"Uh, no," he says. He covers his chest for good measure. "No, I'm not."

"They're still having tea, if you'd like to join them," she says. 

Noct's smile is too bright. "Really? I'd better... better change."

"Clothes in the box at the foot of your bed, your highness," the woman says, walking backwards out the door. It isn't until the door is almost closed that Noct sees the shape of the mark on her neck, right where her scent gland should be. There, peeking over her high, stiff collar, is a black handprint, like someone had dipped their hand in ink and held it there. It can't be a tattoo, Noct knows. Tattoos around the neck are too painful for most, and anything covering the scent gland can cause serious damage. The only reason Noct even knows this is because Gladio's early drafts of his tattoo had sent Clarus Amicitia into a panic, and as a fellow omega, Noct was forced to sit with Gladio and listen to increasingly melodramatic examples of omegas who tried tattooing over their mating marks. 

He opens his mouth to call after her, but the door clicks shut.

Noct untangles himself from the curtains and heads to the bathroom. It's the size of a small bedroom, with heated tiles and a sink shaped like a swan, which has to be the tackiest, most expensive bowl to ever be spat in by a newly-fucked prince. He spends more time on his hair than he should, and opens the box by the bed to find nothing but Ardyn's folded shirts and pants. Noct knows his own clothes have to be somewhere, maybe in the private room below Ardyn's, but he doesn't feel like putting on his wedding suit or running naked down a flight of stairs. He digs through Ardyn's clothes and pulls out dark purple pants that look like they've been washed a few sizes too small, and a black shirt long enough to be a tunic. They both smell of Ardyn, and Noct stands there a moment, nose pressed to the wadded-up fabric, brows furrowed.

The castle looks different in the light of day. There are servants everywhere, all in casual day clothes and aprons, smiling at him and calling him "highness" as he asks, again and again, how to get to the aviary. Something about them feels off. Maybe it's the way their gazes slide away from his, or their cheerful smiles, which seem out of place after living in a city where scowling is an act of self defense. By the time Noct makes it to the aviary at last, he's smiling nervously back and keeping his head down, too aware of the way Ardyn's scent clings to him.

He expects the aviary to be a fenced-off courtyard full of birds. What he finds is a circular enclosure of carved wood and glass, where hundreds of birds made of crystal, stone, and wood perch on tables, hang from wires in the ceiling, and frame the glass windows and skylights with unfurled wings. Noct's father turns to him from a chair shaped like a peacock, and Ardyn, pouring tea from a glass teapot into a third cup, smiles. 

"You're just in time, Noctis," Ardyn says. "Your Shield came by with that charming blond fellow, the one who cried in the champagne during his speech."

"Yeah, Prompto's a sucker for weddings," Noct says, and sits next to his dad. Regis gives him a cursory glance up and down, and Noct fiddles with his cup and dumps in enough sugar to mask the taste of the tea completely. Ardyn gives him an arch look and sits back down. 

"It's good to see you before I go, Noctis," Regis says, taking Noct's hand. "I would like to stay, but-"

"There's the Council," Noct finishes for him. Regis' eyes narrow in a smile, and it hits Noctis that he's going to miss him. Never mind that he rarely sees his father enough as it is. In Insomnia, he always knew that even though he couldn't see Regis, he was still there, just a few miles away. 

"We'll have to plan a visit soon," Regis says. "Can't leave you be too long. You'll have given up the crown to fish full time if I don't keep an eye on you."

"Like you're any better," Noct says. 

Ignis appears in less than half an hour to announce that the cars are ready, then discreetly drags Noct behind a statue of a thrush while Ardyn and Regis do the long, complicated dance of formal farewells.

"How are you feeling?" Ignis asks. He straightens the shoulders of Noct's shirt and peers into his eyes. "You were, well. I noticed you were walking slowly—"

"Yes, we had sex," Noct says. Ignis’ mouth opens slightly, and Noct can't hide a grin.

"Oh! Did you... Are you well?"

"Yes?" Noct groans faintly as Ignis makes a gesture with his hand, and bares his neck. "You'd be able to smell it on me if he marked me, Specs."

"But it _does_ smell like he... Oh, blast, the king is on his way out. Noctis, you know that you have the right to say no—"

"Oh my gods, Ignis."

Ignis charges on, undaunted. "And I will visit once every two weeks, so if you need anything-"

"Ignis, I'm fine."

Ignis straightens. His eyes are glassy and wet, and Noct can see that his hair hasn't been combed back as rigidly as usual, drooping back over his head in an impromptu pompadour. Then Ignis hugs him, tight enough to take the air out of his lungs, and sighs loudly.

"I'll see you soon," he says, and turns to walk off after King Regis.

"You inspire quite a great deal of loyalty," Ardyn says, and Noct jumps to find him at his shoulder. "That Shield of yours insists on staying, despite precedent, and your commoner friend has been talking about photoshoots."

"He has?" Noct asks. "Well, you try telling him no."

"I couldn't," Ardyn admits. "He's distressingly adorable." 

Noct decides not to comment on _that._ "People are kind of quick to leave, aren't they?" he asks. Ardyn touches him on the arm, and saunters off to the door of the aviary. Noct trots after him to keep up. 

"I like my privacy," Ardyn says, and his tone has a note of finality in it that makes Noct hang back. He feels suddenly foolish in Ardyn's old clothes, his hair undone, scruffy and awkward next to a king who's probably gone through this arrangement so many times that it doesn't matter anymore. The kind, almost gentle way Ardyn held him through the night before is already fading in his memory, and Noct feels less like a married man and more like an interloper, awkwardly inching his way around after a one night stand. He touches his neck again, and his fingers run over the unmarked skin.

_Not yet,_ Ardyn had said. 

Noct bows goodbye to his father, takes Ignis by the hand on his way to his own car, and watches the black cars of the Lucian royal entourage disappear along the curve of the cape. 

When he turns back to the castle, Ardyn is walking off down a path to the hedge labyrinth, talking in animated tones to a young gardener.

Noct's hand curls around his neck, and he stares at the wide gardens and seaside paths of his new home.

_Not yet._


	3. Chapter 3

“You would not believe some of the statues this guy has,” Prompto says. He’s lying on his back on a rickety dock by the water, flipping through his camera memory. “Look, Gladio, there’s this weird circle that’s a bunch of people weaving spider-webs. Made of _marble._ One of the gardeners says it was made by one of his majesty’s old… uh.”

He stops. Noct, sitting on the dock with his feet in the clear water, tugs at his line. The one-eyed cat sits beside him, watching the movement of the lure as it skims the surface.

“One of his omegas?” he asks. “Prompto, it’s not like I don’t know. He’s had dozens.” 

“Yeah,” Prompto says, holding the camera to his chest. “But you’re—“

“Watch the line,” Gladio says, and the rod twitches in Noct’s hands. Noct pulls his feet out onto the dock, and the cat oozes over the edge, paw batting at the water. 

Prompto gets on his stomach to snap a picture. “You know,” he says. “I thought he’d be taller. Kind of, I don’t know, beardy. Like all the pictures of the Chosen you see in the shrines.”

Noct and Gladio exchange a look. There are shrines to the old king all over Insomnia, little stone houses with images of what people think he looks like. Even with the rare public appearance and King Regis’ insistence that the shrines are an insult to the gods, no one can stop them from sprouting up on every street corner in the lower city. Some people even pray to him. When Noct was in high school, he used to unroll the prayers and read the small, cramped writing inside, curious to learn what people thought of the king he barely knew. 

_Chosen King, let my next child be a true wolf._

_Make my son an alpha._

_Chosen, give the king a second son._

Noct had heard enough whispers in the Citadel to know that his father was bucking tradition not to take a second wife and try for another child. He’d never considered why. Reading through the prayers at the shrines on the way to Prompto’s house, he’d felt the subtle pressure of a shift in Insomnia’s thinking. Commoners viewed the arrangement between Noct and Ardyn not as a way to keep magic within the Lucian line, but a way to _cure_ the line. To make sure that Lucis doesn’t keep throwing out omega children. Children like Noct.

The Chosen King, they call Ardyn. The paragon of what Lucis could be. 

“Yeah, well, I like him better the way he is,” Gladio says. “More approachable.”

“Are you kidding?” Prompto shudders. “He stopped to ask why I was taking pictures of this place out back, right? I thought he was gonna rip my _throat_ out. And that’s just him _smiling!_ You’ve got balls of steel, buddy.”

Noct curses as the line reels in too close, and casts out again. “I dunno. He seems okay.”

“I bet.” Gladio’s grin is too wide. “You _still_ smell like him.”

“Whatever, man.”

There’s a scrape of rubber on wood as Prompto gets to his feet. Gladio’s shadow falls over Noct, and he twists to the side to look behind him, ignoring the stabbing pain from his lower back. 

Ardyn bends down to scratch the one-eyed cat beneath their chin.

“My apologies for disrupting such a lovely afternoon, pet,” he says, and Gladio raises an eyebrow at Noct. “May I have a word?”

 

The cat joins them. Her name is Medea, she prefers being held to having to walk, and she droops over Noct’s arms as he and Ardyn pass down a set of stairs leading to a low brick wall behind the garden sheds. Ardyn stops to run his hand along a line of creeping moss between the bricks, and his gaze goes distant.

“Tell me, Noctis,” he says. “Have you seen a daemon before?”

“What kind of a question is that to ask?” Noct adjusts his grip on Medea, who sinks her claws into his arm. Ardyn’s expression of vague disinterest doesn’t change. 

“Certainly not an unusual one, in this day and age. Have you?”

“Yeah,” Noct says. “Of course.” Doesn’t Ardyn know? It was all over the newspapers for months. Noct had been eight or so, trapped behind a wrecked car just outside of the city limits, struggling to rise under the weight of a marilith daemon trying to crush his spine. He’d barely made it out alive, and that’s when the whispers of King Regis needing to find a new queen started to rise to a roar. Even in Caem, Ardyn had to’ve heard about it.

Judging by the way Ardyn’s smile thins, he hasn’t.

“Then you know how dangerous it is to draw their attention,” he says. “Outside your crown city, we do not have the freedom you possess. Beyond this wall, past the reach of our daemon warding lights, you are at the mercy of whatever creature chances upon you. There are no… midnight excursions. No starlight chases.”

“Starlight what?” Noct asks. Ardyn looks away from the wall. 

“You don’t have those anymore?”

“I’ve never even heard of them,” Noct says. 

“Damn.” Ardyn says. “They were rather diverting. But dangerous, of course. If you cross this wall, there’s no promise that what finds you will be human. In which case, the line of Lucis will end with you.”

Noct remembers seeing the wall on the way in from the car. Hadn’t there been buildings there? It doesn’t _seem_ like the kind of place someone would keep unguarded. 

“And you aren’t to bother the staff,” Ardyn continues. Noct narrows his eyes. “Some of my people have lived here for generations. It’s only fair that they be treated respectfully. Do not crowd them.”

“I wouldn’t—why would you think I’d—“

“ _I_ know you’re not a royal monster, dear Noctis,” Ardyn says, and something in his smile is more chilling than kind. “But my people do not.”

*

“So that happened,” Noct says, rolling a cork in his hands. He and Prompto are out on the roof above the guest rooms while Gladio bangs around downstairs, either doing cardio or throwing furniture. By the sound of it, it could be either one. The night sky over Caem is brighter than the one in Insomnia, and the band of stars that makes up their galaxy is just visible beyond the shine of distant planets. The moon is only a sliver of blue, but Noct’s skin prickles like it’s waxing full. Beside him, Prompto picks pieces of cork out of a bottle of wine from one of Noct’s gift bags.

“It’s your fault for trying to pull it out with your teeth,” Noct tells him, when Prompto takes a sip and starts spitting. 

“Look, dude,” Prompto says, and flashes his teeth, showing off long incisors. “If I can’t go, you know, full wolf like you and Gladio, I’ve gotta use these babies for something.” He takes another sip. “Anyways, he’s just being careful. Who knows what his other omegas were like.”

“ _I_ know,” Noctis says. Prompto stares at him. “Okay? I do. I looked them up. None of them were really… I mean, okay, there was Bloody Lucia, everyone knows about her, but the other ones all had accounts, or diaries, or whatever. They just talked about how _pretty_ it was and how _nice_ Ardyn was to them. The earlier ones said he used to try and court them. You know, officially.”

Prompto passes the bottle to Noct, and watches him drink. “That what _you_ want?”

“I don’t know what I want,” Noct says.

“Dude, you read their diaries. Gladio’s been trying to get you to read something outside of school for years, and you—“

“Wouldn’t you?” Noct takes another long draft. The wine is too rich, and he realizes, with just a hint of bitterness, that the drinks he’s had at the Citadel were probably watered down. The gloom that’s hovered over him since the morning settles in his stomach, and he hands the wine back to Prompto.

“Honestly, I’d be batshit terrified,” Prompto says. He holds the bottle between his knees. “This place is massive, but it’s in the middle of nowhere. There’s like, one town. You saw the billboard on the way in, right? The _Collars on, Hearts open_ one?”

Noct shakes his head. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Prompto sighs. “I don’t know, buddy. Sometimes… It’s the traditionalists. You know. They’re putting up TV ads and shit, all about how there needs to be more structure. Like, if alphas acted more like they’re supposed to, and same with omegas and betas, we’d be _real_ wolves. Like you.”

“That’s insane,” Noct says. 

“Yeah, well, welcome to the country. Lots of chocobos, not much to stop people like _that_. So it’s weird, you being here. And I don’t know about what his majesty said, with the people who work here. Don’t have me executed for this, okay, but I don’t think he’s telling the truth.”

Noct takes the bottle from between Prompto’s legs. “Uh huh.”

“No, I mean it. You didn’t notice? Everyone who works here… There aren’t any alphas. Hardly any betas, either.” Noct squints at him in the dark, trying to read his face. “Ardyn’s the only one, and he’s _everywhere._ ” 

The wine tastes better on the fourth try. Noct drains the bottle, shoves it in the gift bag, and pulls out another. “You’re saying _he’s_ a traditionalist?”

“He only mates with omegas,” Prompto says, carefully.

“Yeah, because he has to. And he’s not mating _me._ ” Noct closes his eyes and tries to shift, just a little, but he can feel his bones humming with magic. If he tries anything now, even just to turn his nails into claws to pull out the cork, he’ll go, as Prompto put it, full wolf. He shakily hands the bottle to Prompto, who pries it open with his teeth. 

“But it doesn’t matter,” he says, at last. He stands, and the world tilts around him, the stars turning to whirling streaks in the faraway blackness of space. “You know why, Prom?”

“You’re gonna tell me,” Prompto says, with a grin. Noct scoffs.

“Because I’m twenty-three, Prompto.”

“Hate to break it to you, Noct, but you’re nineteen.”

“Not _that_ kind of twenty-three.” Noct staggers closer to the edge of the roof. His head floats, apart from his body, high over the castle walls. “I’m the twenty-third omega Ardyn’s had. And that’s just for the royal family. Not counting the other noble houses. You know. You know, Prom, you know that Gladio has a great-great…. great-great something or other who’s his _daughter?_ I’m competing with an Amicitia, Prom. I can’t do that.”

“Yeah, they’re pretty built,” Prompto says. “Noct, maybe you should—“

“So whatever, right? It doesn’t matter. If I was twenty,” Noct says, a little too loud, “maybe that’d be special. Or twenty-five. But I’m just. Just like. _Here._ As soon as I have kids, that’ll be it. Back to Insomnia, where I can be king for like, ten seconds until the fucking ring gets me or they decide my kids are old enough, because it’s _embarrassing_ to have an omega on the throne. You want traditionalists, Prom? Talk to the fucking Council.”

Prompto slowly gets to his feet. “Noct, c’mere. Sit for a minute.”

“I’m tired of people telling me what to _do_ all the time,” Noctis says, and the heel of his boot slides off the roof and into the open air. 

He has to warp. He _knows_ he has to, he can feel the magic right there, brimming overfull, but when he tries to grasp it, his stomach lurches, and all that happens is a blast of magical light crackles across his knuckles. Someone is shouting—there’s a hiss of wind, a loud _crack,_ and a rumble of thunder. 

Noctis falls into the dark. It’s a roaring, chaotic darkness, thick with the hum of magic. He floats in it, lost, a heavy pressure clamped around his middle, hot and sharp and oddly warm. Then he’s on his hands and knees in the lawn beside the castle, staring down at the thin grass while a hand rests on the back of his neck. 

“Perhaps,” Ardyn says, and Noct looks up into eyes that gleam gold against the lighted windows of the castle. “You should take _falling to your death_ off your list of ways to celebrate your recent wedding.”

“Oh my gods.” Noct sits back on his knees, and sees Prompto clinging to the roof, gasping for breath as though _he_ were the one who just fell from four stories. “Oh my gods, oh my gods…”

“How did you…” Noct swallows down bile. “What _was_ that?”

Ardyn’s smile is warm. “Don’t tell me you never _warped_ before, your highness.”

Noct tries to tell him that whatever that was _wasn’t_ warping, but when he opens his mouth, his churning stomach rolls, and he lurches forward. Ardyn’s eyes widen.

“Oh no,” he says, and grabs Noctis by the shoulders. “No, I’d rather not, thank you.” He tries to spin Noctis around, but Noct falls to his hands and knees again, throwing up most of his dinner and half a bottle of wine all over the savior of Lucis’ perfect, polished shoes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How to Impress Your Immortal Husband, by Noctis Lucis Caelum.  
> (I... may have changed the title, because I came up with the first one at 4am, and that was a bad plan)


	4. Chapter 4

In the end, it’s Gladio who fetches a trembling, white-lipped Prompto down from the roof. Ardyn, barefoot and glowering darkly at Noct at every other step, approaches them as they reach the bottom of the outer stairs. Noct tries not to read too much into how gently Ardyn takes Prompto by the chin, the fond tone of his voice, the smile that makes Prompto’s panicked, wild-eyed gaze soften. 

“Your Majesty,” Prompto says. “When you caught Noct—“ Ardyn shushes him, brushing his chin with a thumb.

“You’ve had a shock,” Ardyn says. Even from where he stands at the edge of the lawn, Noct can feel the edge of Ardyn’s influence in his tone. As an omega, it makes Noct’s tense muscles slacken and his eyelids droop, but all it does for Prompto is ease his shaking to the occasional shudder. “It was dark, and I’m sure the sight of your dear friend acting the fool was, while _unsurprising,_ a terrifying ordeal.” His voice lowers, and behind Prompto, Gladio blinks slowly and places a hand on the wall to steady himself. “But I assure you, all will be forgotten in the morning.”

Prompto’s eyes lose their wide-blown focus, and Ardyn turns his smile to Gladio. The air, thick with the soothing warmth of Ardyn’s voice and scent, breaks apart in a wind from the sea. 

“Would you see your inebriated friend to his room?” he asks. “This dear fellow, of course. Not the prince.”

Gladio doesn’t immediately answer. He looks to Noct first, gives him an almost imperceptible tilt of the head. Noct shrugs, and Gladio says, “Right away, your Majesty,” and takes an unresisting Prompto by the shoulders. They stagger off towards the guest rooms, leaving Noct alone with Ardyn.

“ _You_ certainly know how to kick off the honeymoon,” he says. His gaze passes over the ruined shoes in the middle of the lawn, and Noct’s shoulders hunch forward.

“I said I was sorry.”

“Did you?” Ardyn’s smile is thin. “If you can walk without flinging yourself into a crevasse in a fit of passion, I would like to show you something.”

The hairs on the back of Noctis’ neck start to rise, and there’s a rumble threatening to break loose in his chest, balking at the overly cheery look in Ardyn’s eyes.

“It may be enlightening,” Ardyn says. He turns towards a cobbled path leading out towards the dunes. “Don’t dawdle, twenty-three.”

Noct sputters. “What?”

“You weren’t exactly keeping your voice down. Goodness, young people today. _So_ dramatic.”

“I’m not being…” Noct runs to keep up with Ardyn’s swaying gait. “ _You’re_ the one who has like, a million floral shirts. And gardens. And don’t think I didn’t see that purple car in the garage when we came in.”

Ardyn’s smile flashes in the dark. “Exactly how many skulls _did_ you have on your dress suit at the gala for your eighteenth birthday?”

“Hey, skulls are cool. It’s a Lucis thing.”

The look Ardyn gives Noct is almost as ancient as he is. “Oh, pet,” he says. “I _am_ Lucis.” Noct’s mouth opens, and Ardyn leans over to lift his jaw, closing it with a click of teeth. 

Ardyn’s bare feet scrape along the sugar-fine sand of the dunes, stepping over the coarse green brush that cling to the low hollows like moss. The sand is surprisingly warm, trapping the heat of the sun long after it has set, and Noct has to stop to let a white-bellied snake trail across the path. Against the light of the ocean, Ardyn is all shadow save for the lace hanging from his sleeves. 

Beyond them, looming over the ocean, stands the house by the beach.

“My first built this,” Ardyn says. “The line of Lucis was in… dire straits, you could say. The crystal that sustains your magic was draining their health too quickly, and by the time the arrangement was made, only one in three born to the royal line could fully transform, even under a full moon.” 

Noctis looks down at his hands. It’s been two hundred years since Ardyn last took an omega. Is that why his magic failed him tonight? Why his father is grey at fifty? Why it hurts, hurts like fire, every time Noct’s spine realigns at the base where it had nearly broken so long ago, shifting into the wolf form that defines his line? 

“She understood why it was necessary,” Ardyn tells Noct, stepping around a patch of thistle. “But there was no reason for her to look forward to it.” 

“That doesn’t make sense,” Noctis says. He’d read the first’s diary. Queen Mariana, the ruler who funded the greatest art renaissance in Lucian history, had only written praise for the king who had been her six times great-uncle. When Noct was seventeen, he’d taken a copy of the letters Ardyn had sent to her in the new capital of Insomnia, all full of endearments and praise, his thanks for this or that poet she let him host and the paintings she’d gifted him. “I thought she, I don’t know. Loved you.”

Ardyn laughs. “In her own way. Here we are.” He stops at the worn, wooden stairs to the beach house, which is lifted up on pillars over the dunes. “After you, my dear.”

The blue paint of the front door is chipping away, peeling back in the corrosive salt air, and the frame is warped and rough with splinters. Noct has to push with his shoulder to open it, and the front room is black as pitch. He gropes for a light switch, and finds a dial, which turns on all the overhead fans and causes something in the far corner to beep softly. Finally, he tries to call fire to his palm.

Nothing happens. 

He tries again. He can feel his magic, a well made full with lack of recent use, but it slips through his awareness even as he tries to draw from it. He growls low in his throat and focuses on his eyes alone, willing them to change, to become more of the wolf, pupils going wide in the dark.

His spine pops, and he grips the side of the door.

“Noctis?” 

“I’m fine,” Noct snaps. 

“Oh, yes,” Ardyn’s drawl is languid. “I can see that you are a _picture_ of health. Let my shoes be a testament to this truth. The light is on a chain to your left, by the by.”

Noct fumbles for the chain, and lights come on, strung on wires over the ceiling. “Anyone ever tell you, your Majesty, that you can be kind of…” 

“I’d rather you not finish that thought.” Ardyn ascends the steps. “My ego is a fragile thing. Were you trying to transform just to see in the dark?”

“Not _all_ the way,” Noct says. “Something’s wrong with my magic.”

Ardyn leans against the frame of the door. “You had a bottle of what _looked_ to be my dear Sofia’s best Accordan wine. Give it a day.”

Noct isn’t sure that’s it, but who is he to argue with _Sofia’s_ taste in alcohol? He takes his shoes off at the foyer, and feels the old, polished boards under his toes. There aren’t any new shoes to slip into, so he walks across the small living room. The couches are old but serviceable, there are enough bookshelves to make Gladio go dreamy-eyed, and there’s a small oil painting of Queen Mariana over the fireplace. She’s smiling, much younger than the portraits of her in the Citadel, with flowers blooming at her back like wings against the black curtains behind her. Her head is tilted to the side to show off the unmarked skin of her neck. 

He turns to find Ardyn still standing at the door.

“You waiting for something?” he asks. Ardyn enters, kicking sand off his feet onto the mat. His scent is faint against the wind coming in through the slats of the windows, and Noct wonders if that’s why the house was built so close to the ocean. 

“So this is what you’re showing me?” Noct looks up at the lightbulbs dangling overhead. “The house? I’m not being, uh. This isn’t a punishment, for the shoes…”

“You’d consider living here a _punishment?_ ” Ardyn says. Noct gives him a little shrug, and for once, Ardyn _almost_ looks surprised. There’s a crease between his brows, and Noctis represses the urge to run his fingers down it, smoothing it out. 

“In any case,” Ardyn says, “what you need to see is upstairs.”

The stairs are in the center of the living room, made of metal and winding in tight circles around a steel pole. There’s a hallway above, with open doors leading to an empty bedroom, a study, and what looks like an abandoned nursery full of dolls with wide, porcelain eyes that come straight from the better class of nightmares. Noct discreetly closes the door before Ardyn can follow him. 

He’s directed to the bedroom, which is built in the same style as the ones in the Citadel, with sharp corners and an angular roof. The carpet beneath Noct’s feet is probably a few centuries old, and he stops short at a tapestry on the wall opposite the bed, preserved in glass. The words stitched onto it are in old Lucian, and it takes him a moment to translate it. 

“No will to bind you?” He looks to Ardyn, whose face is carefully blank. 

“From the third century,” Ardyn says. He opens a chest at the foot of the bed. “Here,” he says. 

Noct leans over the chest. It looks like a junk drawer with books and photographs mixed in, and he lifts out a laurel like his own crown, but wreathed in gold flowers rather than silver lightning.

“That would be…” Ardyn’s voice is distant. “King Bas’ consort. They used to have crowns of their own, you know. This one… Oh, I forgot his name. Old Bas put up a statue of him in Lestallum.”

Noctis sets the laurel down gently in the corner of the chest, and unearths a photograph. It’s an old photo, one of the ones that took so long to shoot that people had to hold position for ages. Whoever is in _this_ one clearly hadn’t gotten the memo. Two women sit in the middle of a boat, laughing, long legs tangled up in each other as ghost limbs trail about the frame. 

“Demetria,” Ardyn says. “When she passed, her lover moved back here. She had a laugh like a daemon.” 

Noct looks up at Ardyn, who is standing with his shoulder to one of the bedposts. He looks past him, into the dark corner of the room.

“How many?” Noct whispers. 

“Enough.” Noctis brushes the edge of the picture with his thumb, and the grinning faces of the old queen and her lover look back at him. “Immortality tends to strip the illusions from a man. You are young, Noctis. One day, this too shall pass.”

Noctis puts the photo back in the chest and closes it. “Nah,” he says, and Ardyn raises his brows just a fraction. “I think I’m good.” He stands, and when he grips Ardyn by the collar, Ardyn places a hand over his mouth.

“Not,” Ardyn says, with a steely glint in his eyes, “until you’ve brushed your teeth.”

*

Noctis knows that any hope of taking this to bed is over when he sees the giant claw-foot tub in the center of the bathroom. He ends up kneeling between Ardyn’s legs with his hands clenched on the sides of the bath, rose-scented water sloshing at his upper back. Ardyn kisses him slowly, dragging his nails over Noct’s chest, making pink lines against his skin. Noct is already breathless, panting into Ardyn’s mouth. He pulls back to kiss down his jaw, and nuzzles into the crook of Ardyn’s neck, breathing in his scent. He can smell ozone, a tickle of magic that laces through the overwhelming scent of _alpha,_ and there’s a tug in the back of his mind, like his own magic is drawing him closer. 

He wants to mark him. 

He knows this is impossible, knows that whatever it is in an omega’s biology that makes them… well, _omega,_ makes it so attempts at bonding bites never stick, but the urge is there all the same. It feels like he’s in the throes of a heat, reason cast aside to make way for pure, unhindered _want._ He opens his mouth to Ardyn’s scent gland, and his teeth scrape the surface of his skin.

The magic in the air thickens, and Ardyn _growls._ The tone of it strikes a note in Noct’s belly that makes him want to sink down, to expose his throat to Ardyn and whine, and he makes no protest when Ardyn takes him by the shoulders and pushes him onto his chest against the other side of the tub. 

Ardyn enters him in one slow thrust, and Noct’s keening moan echoes off the tile. 

*

The next morning, it’s Noct’s turn to wake first. 

He isn’t sure how he made it back to the bed. The last thing he remembers is Ardyn lifting him out of the tub, of his limbs being too heavy to move properly, his hand sliding off Ardyn’s arm when he means to reach his neck. But here he is, dressed in a nightshirt with Ardyn draped over him, feeling sore and a little awkward in flower-patterned sheets. The sun is shining directly onto Noct’s face, and he groans and idly casts a single strand of lightning to magnetize the rings of the curtain, drawing them closed. 

It isn’t until after the curtains all jam together in a tangle of static electricity that Noct realizes that he’s just cast a spell. 

He grins. Maybe Ardyn was right after all. Maybe it was just Accordan wine, or the fall. He calls fire to his hand and laughs as flames envelop his fingers. 

“Gods,” Ardyn mutters. “Please don’t self-immolate before noon, highness.”

Noct closes his fist, and the fire goes out. 

When a soft knocking comes from upstairs, Ardyn rolls over. 

“If it’s the staff,” he says, “be a good man and tell them I’m dead.”

“Yeah, I get the feeling they won’t believe me,” Noct says. Ardyn snorts, but doesn’t move, and Noct realizes that the knocking is just going to continue unless he does something about it. 

He tries not to jump when he opens the front door. The aproned boy standing on the porch can’t be older than seventeen, and his face is a ruin of scars. They run down his cheeks in four ragged lines, directly over a green glass eye and the twist of a lopsided mouth. Noct has seen scars like that before: He’d made them himself when he was young, raking his claws on the wall during one of the more difficult full moons. These are shiny and fresh, and Noct stares at the boy’s high collar instead, buttoned tight to his neck. 

“Your Highness!” The boy bows. “Is the king with you? Only we’ve burned his shoes like he asked, and there’s a letter from the Secretary of Defense for him.”

“He says he’s dead,” Noct says, trying not to wince at the mention of the shoes. The boy rolls his good eye. 

“Ain’t falling for _that_ one again.”

“You fell for it before?” 

The boy blushes deeply. He’s definitely an omega: Maybe only just started going through his heats, by the way his scent drowns out even the sting of the ocean. “I’m sorry, Highness,” he says. “I ain’t used to—I’m new, I know you ain’t—aren’t—“

“It’s fine,” Noct says, taking pity on him. “And I’m not really into the whole _your highness_ thing. It’s just Noctis.”

“Oh.” The boy backs up a step, and then smiles, the scar pulling one side of his mouth into a grimace. It’s the kind of bright, open look that Prompto makes every time he sees a chocobo, and Noct smiles back. “Well, you tell the king for me, right? About the shoes, and the letter. When he’s not dead anymore.”

“Sure thing,” Noct says. The boy salutes, but before he can pound down the stairs, Noct rocks forward. “Uh. Sorry, but… You’re okay, right? I mean, the scars, they look new.”

The boy doesn’t look offended. He just shrugs. “Oh, yeah,” he says. He places a hand on his neck, right where his scent gland should be, and his smile broadens. “I’m _great._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pro-tip: Having hot sex does not make things any less creepy.


	5. Chapter 5

Prompto Argentum sits cross-legged on a towel at the beach, gingerly petting the one-eyed Medea as she rolls to her back and hooks her paws in the air. Further down, on the dense, damp sand still drying from a receding tide, Noctis stands in the center of a drawn circle, holding out a blade while Gladio circles him.

“You swear you don’t remember anything?” he shouts. Gladio feints, but Noctis stays steady, not even flinching. Prompto risks scratching Medea’s chest ruff and gets two sets of claws for his trouble. 

“Shit!” He wrenches his hand away. “I remember you were on the roof, and you falling, but then it all gets kind of… blurry.”

“You were pretty out of it when I got you to bed,” Gladio says. Noctis senses a change in his scent, and stiffens. “That’s what you get for drinking Sofia’s wine.”

“Did someone send out a memo about that or something?” Noct asks. Gladio shrugs, and the movement masks the bunching of the muscles in his thighs, the taut wire of his tendons. Noctis sees it too late, and drops his sword. “Oh, no. No, Gladio, it’s not even a half moon yet. Gladio, no—“

“Gladio, yes!” Prompto shouts. Noct’s Shield plants one foot in the circle, leaps into the air—

And comes down on four paws, bowling Noctis over onto his back. As a wolf, he’s impressively large, but his paws are still too big for the rest of him, giving him the look of an overgrown puppy with long russet fur and a pattern of black marks where his tattoo would be. Prompto applauds, and Noctis curses loudly, spitting out sand. When Prompto puts two fingers in his mouth to whistle, both Noctis and Gladio give him reproachful looks. 

“A _wolf_ whistle?” Noct asks. “Really?”

“You’re outmatched, dude,” Prompto says. Medea, outraged by the sight of perfectly acceptable human beings voluntarily turning into _dogs,_ stalks off into the dunes, ragged tail bushed. 

“Goddammit,” Noct says. “This always hurts.”

He closes his eyes. Transformations are quick, almost instantaneous, but Noct’s tends to get muddled in the middle as old injuries shift and crack. He knows his father has the same problem. He knows his children probably will, too, and theirs, doomed to weakness in their joints even as magic flows in their veins. _He’s_ just unlucky enough to have a daemon attack to speed things along. His yelp of pain rises high, but soon enough he’s wriggling out from under Gladio, his midnight fur speckled with sand and bits of seashell. Where Gladio is powerfully built, Noct’s small, lithe frame is made for speed. He pushes Gladio in the shoulder, and the two of them jostle each other to the edge of the surf. 

“Lookin’ good!” Prompto shouts. Gladio turns to Prompto, and his mouth opens slightly. His eyes flick to Noctis, who rolls his shoulders in a shrug. Prompto stands. 

“Hey,” he says, as Gladio slowly pads towards him. “Hey, hold on, I’m just a plebe. You can’t—that’s abuse of power, you ganging up—“ He looks to the right, where Noct is trying to flank him. Noct barks, and Prompto takes off running. 

Noct easily catches up, a sleek black presence at Prompto’s right side. He crouches to prepare for a jump, but Gladio vaults over him, rolling Prompto onto his back. Prompto stares up at Gladio’s wide mouth, his sharp teeth, the lolling tongue, and reaches up to scratch him behind the ears. 

Gladio leans his head into the touch, whining faintly.

“Sucker,” Prompto says. Noct comes up from behind, snuffling at his hair, and tries to fit half of Prompto’s head in his mouth. “Gross, dude!”

There’s no hope of training after that. They go for a run instead, Prompto boxed in on either side as Noct and Gladio fight for his attention like unruly puppies, nipping and yelping and trying to herd Prompto into the water. At the end of the beach, where a set of crumbling rocks marks the edge of Ardyn’s property, Prompto climbs over a barnacle-encrusted stone and holds his camera high.

“All hail Prompto Argentum!” he shouts, as Noct and Gladio try to crowd onto the stone with him. “King of the wolves!”

*

That afternoon, Prompto reminds Noct that while he’d _like_ to live full-time as the official Ear Scratcher of transformed werewolf princes, he can’t stay past his allotted vacation time without losing his job at the camera store back home. So the three of them search the garage for Noct’s car, which is probably way too expensive to be driving around the country. When Noct gets in, resolutely ignoring the seatbelt, Prompto leans on the door. 

“Uh.” He drums his fingers on the hood. “You guys don’t think we should tell His Majesty?”

“What, Ardyn?” Noct squints. “Why?”

“I don’t know. You’re married now, and he’s your—“ 

“If you say alpha,” Noct says, “I’m disowning you.”

Gladio snorts, and Prompto gets into the passenger’s seat with a sigh. 

Prompto was right during their talk on the roof: Caem is a one-diner town, with not much that can serve as a proper send-off. They huddle in a booth at the Crow’s Nest, plates piled high with burgers and fries drenched in a light coating of grease, and Gladio shakes his head as Noct carefully takes off anything remotely resembling a vegetable. While he works on picking off pieces of wilting lettuce, Noct fills them in on his morning.

“And he had these scars down his face,” he says, gesturing with his fork. “But he didn’t seem _upset_ about it. He was holding his neck, like this.”

Gladio frowns. “Maybe he got marked by someone,” he says. “Someone he wanted, not whoever fucked up his face.”

“Could’ve been an accident,” Prompto says. “Did he have that weird paint mark? The one with the hand?” He holds his left hand to the side of his right neck. “Only, I talked to one of the gardeners who liked my photos, right, and he had one. Says it’s some kind of local thing. Like a temporary tattoo.”

“I saw one of those,” says Noct. “Didn’t look like paint to me.”

“Yeah?” Prompto steals a limp fry from Gladio’s plate. “What else can it be?”

A hand clamps down on the top of the diner seat by Gladio’s head, and the three of them glance up. 

“Hey, boys.” A skinny, wiry-muscled man with bony fingers and a wide smile looks from Gladio to Noct, ignoring Prompto altogether. “Passing through?”

“Not interested,” Gladio says, and Noct suppresses a snort. The man’s scent changes, and Noct tries not to roll his eyes. An alpha, barely able to control his own scent, trying to give off the sense of ease while he’s clearly a few days short of a rut. He gives Prompto the secret, best friend look that means, _creep,_ and Prompto nods. 

“I just thought,” the man says, “that you knew what you’re doing, coming out like this.”

“Like what?” Noct asks. “Breathing?”

The alpha gestures to his neck, and Noct peers down the diner at the other patrons. One or two wear leather or cloth bands around their necks, and Noct scowls. Right, he thinks. _Collars on._

“Well,” he says. “You see, when it comes to bullshit, backwards customs, we—“

“He has an alpha,” Prompto says. Noct stops, lips parted. Prompto has drawn himself up, shoulders squared, incisors lengthening just enough to show. “And that one’s mine.” He gestures to Gladio, who raises his brows.

The alpha laughs. “You? A beta? You’re kidding.”

“I don’t need to collar an omega,” Prompto says. “If they don’t know they’re mine already, I’m not doing it right.”

They stare at each other for a long moment. Noct can feel the alpha trying to exert his influence, but Prompto’s been hanging out with Noct and Gladio too long. Noct knows that after years of being around royalty, whose scents and spoken commands are stronger than most commoner pack leaders combined, this guy’s nothing. Sure enough, he backs down, removing his hand from the seat. 

“You shoulda been born an alpha,” he says, begrudging respect in his voice. Prompto shrugs, deliberately nonchalant.

“I do okay.”

They watch the man retreat, and Gladio kicks Prompto from under the table. “The hell, Prompto. I’m _yours?_ ”

Prompto blushes a deep pink. “I had to say _something._ I don’t have enough money to bail you guys from jail if you get booked for beating up some random alpha.”

Gladio smiles, and Prompto’s blush spreads to his ears. “Alright, tough guy. I saw a girl with some CDs in her cart out front. How much you wanna bet I can find one of those weird bands you like, with the screaming guys?”

“It’s Metal,” Prompto cries, all indignant outrage, and they lean across the table towards each other, arguing in slowly rising tones about what, technically, qualifies as music, and what qualifies as banshee screeching. Noct settles back against the window and watches the blush fade from Prompto’s cheeks, notes the way Gladio keeps reaching out to touch his wrist or grab his phone, and forgets all about scars, insistent alphas, and the alien strangeness of being in a town where the lack of a collar is more unusual than the presence of one. 

Prompto’s lucky: There _is_ one metal album in the cart, and he makes Noct loop around the road a few times as he stops and rewinds the CD to point out different cadences in speech, guitar riffs, and drumming styles. Noct can feel his eyes glazing over, but Gladio’s just as animated as ever, so he gamely holds on for half an hour before he calls an end to it.

That evening, Noct resists the call to climb up the stairs to Ardyn’s room, and enlists Prompto’s help in setting up the TV, wireless router, and game system in his own rooms. He doesn’t even consider going to the house on the beach. It would be… weird, to play video games there. It feels like a museum, a shrine to old omegas, and something about invading it seems like sacrilege. 

Gladio brings some sodas up from the kitchen pantries, and they all collapse on the couch to play Baby Chocobo Bash, a game where fat baby chocobos drive monster trucks down a rainbow-themed track. Prompto is half asleep by midnight, curled up on Gladio’s side, and Noct gives his Shield an arch look. 

“Don’t start,” Gladio whispers. Prompto’s hand drops onto Gladio’s lap, and he nuzzles into his bicep. 

“Wouldn’t dream of it, big guy,” Noct whispers back. 

*

Prompto cries when he gets on the bus in the morning. Noct is holding Medea, having resigned himself to a life as a cat bearer, so Prompto just smacks him on the ass instead of going in for a hug. Which would be fine, normally, except Ardyn is there, and three of the gardeners Prompto has inexplicably managed to befriend, and they all give Noct curious looks while Prompto presses Gladio’s face together in both hands and makes undignified squeaking sounds when Gladio calls him _sunshine._ Noct tries to ignore the stares. Even with the breeze coming off the water, he’s sweating, and he feels itchy and too large for his black tee and cargo pants. When Prompto’s bus wheezes off, he makes a beeline for the castle, lured by the promise of air conditioning.

Except Ardyn catches up with him just as they reach the door, and Noct finds it suddenly vital that he shove the immortal king of light up against the frame and try to climb him like a tree. Medea drops to the floor, disgusted, and creeps off into the hall.

Ardyn gently pries Noctis off. “Highness,” he says.

“Yeah.” Noct surges forward. “Call me that again.”

“Ah.” Ardyn smells _amazing._ Noct knows he probably smelled good before, but right now, all he wants to do is latch onto his neck and wrap his legs around his waist—

“Noctis,” Ardyn says, and Noct gets the idea that this isn’t the first time he’s said his name. “When was your last heat?”

“What?” Noct shakes his head. “I’m not due for another two months. You’re wearing too many belts. How many belts does one man need to have? We should fix that, I can help—“

Ardyn grabs Noct by the wrists, and when he speaks again, there’s a tone of command there that makes Noctis want to drop to his knees. Which would be… wrong. There’s a reason that should be wrong, but Noct can’t remember. He wonders if he should try it, just to see. 

“I may be responsible for this,” Ardyn says, speaking to Gladio, which is ridiculous, because _Gladio_ isn’t _his._ Okay, Noct isn’t his, either, not really, but he’s pretty sure he can change that. He has plans. Most of them involve Ardyn being naked. They’re foolproof. “Sometimes a change in, ah, sexual activity—“ 

“Your Majesty, with all respect, I don’t need to know,” Gladio says.

“He means we had sex,” Noct says, and Gladio groans. “We should do that again.”

“Sorry, Majesty,” Gladio tells Ardyn. “He gets like this. Goes under pretty much the moment it starts. Give him another day, and he’ll fight any omega that goes near him. I can…”

Noct stops listening. This is _boring._ He’s hot, his stomach is in knots, he’s bursting out of his clothes, and Ardyn’s right _here_ but he isn’t _doing_ anything. Noct considers whining. Whining sounds like a good idea.

“Oh, gods,” Gladio says. “Not the whine. Your Majesty, I can take him, I’ve seen him through heats before.”

“No,” Noct whispers. He tries to climb Ardyn again, but the man just _won’t_ let go of his _wrists._ “No-o-o.”

“How about a shower, pet?” Ardyn asks. 

“ _Nooooo,_ ” Noctis wails, softly, as Ardyn picks him up in both arms. 

The shower helps, marginally. It helps wash off some of Noct’s own scent, and the feverish state of his mind recedes enough for Noct to remember that he tried to hook his legs around Ardyn’s waist in public. He turns his face to the corner of the shower stall and groans. 

“You’ve come back to us,” Ardyn says, sounding deeply amused. He’s leaning on the sink, his scent muted, and Noct risks a look at him. 

“I didn’t just—“

“Proposition me in the foyer? Oh, yes.”

Noctis groans again. 

“It’d be best to decide now, Noctis.” Ardyn crosses his ankles. “Your Shield is experienced in helping you through your heats. I can certainly help, but bear in mind that the risk of pregnancy…”

“Isn’t that the point?” Noct asks. “That’s why you agreed to this.”

Ardyn’s soft smile doesn’t change. 

“It is,” Noct says. “Right?”

“I’ll be in the room if you need me,” Ardyn says. Noctis can feel himself going under again. He can probably make it to Gladio’s room in time, but Ardyn is moving about in the room beyond, adjusting pillows, closing curtains, and Noct finds himself drawn to him as a light through empty space, padding naked onto the expensive rugs of his bedroom floor. 

“I think I need you,” he says.


	6. Chapter 6

“Why do I get the feeling,” Noct says, “that you’ve done this before?”

Ardyn’s hands, which up until this moment have been running up Noct’s back with a fine sheen of ice magic under his fingertips, draw away. Noct tries to move, to twist around to protest, but Ardyn is holding him down with his thighs alone, and every movement brings with it a friction that makes it harder for him to remember why he should be upset in the first place.

“Highness,” Ardyn says, and Noct smiles slowly. “I will not speak of former omegas while we are in the throes of passion.”

“Who calls it that?” Noct rocks back against him, trying to make it known through desperate wriggling alone that he may in fact be dying for lack of touch. “We aren’t in the throes of passion, you’re fucking me until I can’t think anymore.”

“Romance is dead,” Ardyn mutters, but he kisses the back of Noct’s hand, so that’s alright. 

The sheets are a mess. Noctis is still damp from the shower, and he hisses and pants and clutches at the headboard, which is a little too far away to reach. When Ardyn sits back and asks him to roll over, Noct just blinks at him lazily.

“Usually,” Ardyn says. “Omegas are _active_ during their heats.”

“I’m plenty active,” Noct says. His voice comes out in a slurred drawl, almost a match for Ardyn’s. Ardyn cards his fingers through Noctis’ hair, and Noct nearly rolls off the bed in his attempt to face him. Ardyn lifts his legs to his wide shoulders, and a distant part of Noct’s brain wonders exactly how he expects to walk after this is done. When the blunt head of Ardyn’s cock pushes through, stretching him to the point of pain, Noct braces himself on Ardyn’s chest with both hands. 

This is wrong. It’s _close_ to what Noct needs, but not enough, and Noct moves faster than he should, grinding down with a groan. Ardyn’s breath is shallow, and he thrusts into Noctis before he’s even fully seated, which is closer, closer to what feels right. Noct’s fingers clench, trying to time his movements to match Ardyn’s thrusts, but he’s too erratic, and Ardyn’s hands hold him by the hips as he fucks into him. 

“Ardyn,” he says. “Ardyn, there’s something… something I’m forgetting.” His hands trail up Ardyn’s chest, fingers brushing over the sides of his neck. “Something I need. _Ardyn,_ I—“ he wails as Ardyn’s cockhead presses against his prostate, and digs his fingers into Ardyn’s hair. He’s forgotten already, lost to the feel of being fucked open, being stretched, of the insistent need in the back of his mind roaring to life. He cries out again, and Ardyn kisses him on the cheek. 

“Cover your neck,” Ardyn says. He’s snapping his hips hard, pushing Noct back on the tangled sheets. “Highness, you need to cover your _neck._ ”

“I don’t—“ Noct’s hands are drawn up to his scent gland and held there, trapped in Ardyn’s hold, and Ardyn kisses his knuckles. He holds himself there, breath hot against Noct’s fingers, and his pupils narrow, amber eyes gone gold in the lamplight. The shadow he casts over Noct eclipses him, and Noct comes just from this, from the warmth of him, the friction of his own cock between them. Ardyn fucks him through it, and when his knot pushes through, Noctis bites down on his shoulder. 

For a moment, all Noct can smell is the sea. It’s so strong that even the dizzying scent of his own heat is stripped from him, and Noct is suddenly clear-headed and aware of the weight of Ardyn’s body, the way his own nails have lengthened into claws on his back. He can see a blackness spreading out under Ardyn’s skin, branching like veins, like the brittle twigs of a dead tree. They stop at the spot where Noctis has touched him as though repelled by a wall. 

He looks over Ardyn’s shoulder, and all the paintings on the walls have changed to those of the one in the Citadel. Two wolves on the beach, with the ocean towering over them, threatening to break. Etro’s face in the wave is _moving_ in the oil, and her lips form dark shapes in the paint. 

In every painting, her eyes turn to face Noctis. 

“Noctis?” Ardyn’s voice sounds like it’s coming from a far distance, and Noct’s vision swims with tears. A calloused hand brushes the dampness aside, and Noct flinches. “Noctis, I’m dreadfully sorry, it’s been so long. I may have forgotten the influence I can have…”

Ardyn’s face is clear. The paintings behind him are the same as they were before, and Noct can feel the heat pooling in his stomach again, making the edges of his awareness go hazy and dull. 

“Never passed out from sex before,” Noct says, trying for a joke. It falls pathetically flat. Trust him to have freakish sex dreams. 

“We can end this here,” Ardyn says. “I believe the worst may be over.”

“No.” Noct glances to the side, where a painting of an innocuous canyon hangs next to a set of drawers. “But if you can close the curtains on the, on the bed…”

Ardyn doesn’t question it. He tugs at a rope at the corner of the bedpost, and heavy black curtains roll down to the carpet. Noct reaches for Ardyn in the dark, and there’s no way to tell if the skin he touches is marred, or if the paintings beyond remain unchanged. Ardyn’s lips on his are soft, his hands sure, and soon, in the movement of their bodies and rising pleasure, there is no room left for disquieting dreams.

It takes three days for the heat to subside. When it’s finally reduced to nothing more than a dull ache and the embarrassing feeling that he has, at least once, called Ardyn “Your Majesty” in the height of climax, Noct hobbles his way to the shower and sits there for an hour. Someone—probably Ardyn, or a sympathetic member of the omega staff—has left a basket of toiletries on the floor by the shower door, and Noct almost cries when he sees the same kind of soap he always uses for heats back home. He walks back into Ardyn’s room feeling halfway human, and finds that Ardyn has had the sheets of the bed replaced in his absence. He climbs back into them, and Ardyn sighs when Noct pulls him down.

“Just want to lie here,” he mumbles. 

“Note my surprise,” Ardyn says, and Noct nudges him with a knee. 

“Is it normal to have dreams, though?” Noct asks, as Ardyn’s arms lock him in to his chest. “In the middle of a heat, I mean. Usually, I’m too out of it to remember anything.”

Ardyn’s lips tickle his forehead. “It’s certainly rare enough. Why do you ask?”

Noct tells him, haltingly, about the vision on the first day. About the paintings, and the black tinge to his veins, the way Etro seemed to be speaking to him. When he’s finished, Ardyn’s face looks bemused, maybe a little bland, but Noct can smell fear creeping into Ardyn’s scent. Fear, mixed with a shivery, overwhelming sense of _elation_.

“Curious,” Ardyn says, and his voice is smooth as always. “I wouldn’t put much stock in it, pet. It must have been your heightened emotions running away with you.”

“The throes of passion,” Noct says, dully.

“Just so.” Ardyn kisses him, smiling into his mouth, and Noctis can taste the lie on his tongue.

*

Noctis texts Ignis a few days later to ask him to bring a pregnancy test when he visits on the full moon, and _then_ has to spend two hours glued to the phone while Ignis makes sure, for the fifteenth time, that “You’re _absolutely_ fine?” In the end, Gladio has to take the phone from Noct and growl something about protection being _his_ fucking job, thank you, and Noct has to stare into the distance and deal with the fact that two of his friends are now talking about who will be responsible if he injures himself during sex.

Slowly, Noct thinks he’s starting to get used to the castle. The staff still treat him with caution, though the guy with the scars, who calls himself Phelan, passes by once or twice to have an actual conversation. Noct catches him sitting on the wall behind the forbidden stretch of land one afternoon, tossing sunflower seeds over the other side, and learns through him that Ardyn has a pen of chocobos behind the hedge maze. Ardyn finds him there that afternoon, posing with a flock of fat, peeping baby chocobos so he can send selfies to Prompto. Ardyn offers to take a few photos of Noct holding a chocobo in each arm, but when Noct takes a look at his phone later, all the shots are of Ardyn himself, winking at the camera.

Prompto sends Noct sobbing and dagger emojis for the next two days.

He knows, after the talk about his dream during his heat, that he should keep a distance from Ardyn until he’s figured himself out. Until he’s gathered up the courage to talk about it to Ignis, or Gladio, or maybe even Prompto, who’s probably the one with the clearest head out of any of them. But nearly every night, regardless how late he stays up with Gladio, his endless email chains with Ignis or the late night gaming with Prompto, he takes the stairs to Ardyn’s rooms. And every night, Ardyn is there, with that same shivery feeling of excitement, the same sting of dread in the midst of it all, waiting for him. 

Some nights, Ardyn nearly claims him. Noct bares his neck for him, pulls at his shoulders and rocks into him, but Ardyn just bites _above_ his neck, just below his jaw, or he clamps a hand over his scent gland and slams into Noct so hard that he can barely breathe.

It starts to break into their daily hours, as well. When Noct catches Ardyn in a bare circle in the rose garden, swinging a black crystal sword in the air in a style he’s never even heard of before, Ardyn stops at his approach. The fear returns, sickly sweet even over the mess of roses, but it’s gone by the time Noct jumps down into the circle.

“Didn’t know you could fight like that,” he says, and Ardyn smiles.

“I wasn’t always a healer-king.” 

And because Noct is burning with a compulsion that even a week of sleepless nights can’t shake, he summons a sword in a flurry of magic. He lasts thirty seconds. It’s probably the best thirty seconds in his _life,_ so even when Ardyn is standing with a boot on his chest and a sword at his throat, Noct bares his teeth and asks for a second round. 

None of the other omegas talked about _this._

The day before the full moon, when Ignis is due to arrive with a sheaf of reports and the usual foul mood he sinks into at that time of the month, Gladio picks Noct up from the ground of the rose garden and helps him limp to the beach. He has Noct’s fishing rod and tackle under one arm, and Medea meets them halfway, trying to trip him up as they pass through the dunes.

“You’re takin’ to this better than I thought,” Gladio says. “Used to be I had to drag you out of bed just to go on a run.”

“You still do,” Noct tells him, and Gladio rolls his eyes. “I don’t know, Gladio. It's kind of fun. I made it three minutes this time.”

“Yeah, but… You guys get intense,” Gladio says. When Noct doesn’t answer, he pulls him in for a one-armed hug, half dragging him over the sand to the dock. “Today, you went for his throat like you _meant_ it.”

“He’s immortal, Gladio.”

Gladio only shrugs, which, coming from him, could mean anything. Noct snatches the rod from him and jumps onto the dock. Medea, enticed by the prospect of fish, gallops after him. 

Noct is about two hours in and three seconds from shoving Gladio “Respool the line before it’s too late” Amicitia into the ocean when they hear it: A frantic, scrabbling sound, and a clatter of stones. Noct reels in the line at last (nevermind that he’s let it fray to the point of snapping just out of spite) and Gladio runs to the end of the dock. There’s a small, dark figure trying to rise from the beach before the rock wall at the edge of the castle property, and when Noct sees them fall to the sand a second time, he drops his rod to the dock and races after Gladio.

Noct is wheezing when he catches up, almost as badly as the man who Gladio is slowly helping to his feet. The man is an omega, reeking of fear and covered in angry scrapes from his fall off the rocks, and when he sees Noctis, his brown eyes disappear under drooping lids and he sinks to his knees.

Noctis looks at Gladio helplessly. “Thank the gods,” the man says. “You don’t know how long I’ve been going. I think they’re… I think they’re on the way. Your Majesty, I…”

“Woah.” Noct bends down to help the omega up by the arms. “I’m not the king. What are you talking about? Who’s after you?”

The man swallows around the too-tight collar at his neck, and Gladio moves in, pushing out a calming scent, the way he does when Noct is half-mad with his heats. “Easy,” he says. “Let’s get that off.”

“I don’t want people to see,” the omega whispers. There are tears in his eyes, and he pushes them away with his fingers. 

“It’s okay,” Noct says. “We’ll help, alright? I don’t know what Ardyn—what the king can do for you, but maybe you can, I don’t know, hide out with us until…” He stops as the collar comes away, and sees the red, irritated imprints of two mating marks on the man’s neck. 

“It looks bad, doesn’t it?” the man says. Gladio gives Noct a pained look over the man’s shoulder, and Noct attempts a smile. 

“No, it’s fine.” Noct knows it isn’t. Between the panic pouring off the man and the fresh pink of the marks, any alpha would be able to track him. Attempts at filing reports for unwanted marking tend to fall flat when alphas can just exert their influence to make an omega docile long enough to drop charges. The most anyone can do is kill the alpha, which doesn’t help the omega if they want to take another mate. They’re marked for life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Gods: So we need to get some kind of divine warning/message to Prince Noctis.  
> Etro: I'm thinking fucked-up sex dreams.  
> The Gods: .....  
> The Gods: OR, we can-  
> Etro: Too late, it's done.


	7. Chapter 7

When Ardyn rounds the corner of the hedge maze and onto the main path to the beach, Noct is the first to look up. He can _feel_ Ardyn like the hum of magic in the air, his scent no longer masked as it usually is in his waking hours. It takes Gladio a few seconds to catch on, and then the omega, who has been sitting between them with his hands wrapped around his middle, struggles to rise to his knees. 

“What have we here?” Ardyn asks. He’s smiling, and his wide-sleeved shirt, patterned with cherry blossoms, has been rolled up to his sleeves. The casual dress and the jaunty sway of his hips are in direct contrast to the strength of his voice, which drips with the firm influence of an alpha. Noct reaches out to Gladio to steady himself, and the omega kneeling on the path drops his shoulders, the tension draining from the hard lines of his face. 

Ardyn takes a knee before the man, and makes a sideways gesture with his hand. The man tilts his head to the side, revealing the two marks on his neck. 

“Your Majesty,” he says, but Ardyn shushes him. Then, to Noct’s horror, he places his fingers directly over the marks.

Gladio gives Noct a look of concern. It’s beyond rude for an alpha to touch the marks of a mated omega, regardless of the context. But the omega just sighs as Ardyn examines the irritated skin around the bites, and his hands, which had been shaking since Noct and Gladio found him, are still. 

“Two weeks old?” Ardyn says. The man nods. “And the alphas who did this, they’re likely following your scent? I see.” His smile brightens. “Well, you’ve come at the right time. Noctis, Gladiolus, if I may have a moment alone with our new friend? What _is_ your name, sweet?”

The omega blinks. “Kieran.”

“Very good,” Ardyn says, and Gladio grabs Noct by the arm, pulling him away. Noct follows reluctantly, hanging back a few steps as Ardyn fusses over the newcomer, murmuring low. The omega clutches Ardyn’s hands, and when he speaks again, his voice is almost too faint to hear.

“Thank you, Majesty,” he says. “But I don’t care what happens. I just want it gone.”

*

That night, when Noct walks into Ardyn’s rooms, he enters to find the bed empty. The bathroom is spotless, the alcove where Ardyn keeps his notes is untouched, and even the book that Ardyn had been reading the night before is in the same position on the endtable. Noct calls for Ardyn, a little awkwardly, but no immortal kings seem eager to emerge from the shadows. He sits down on the bed instead, sinking into the mattress, and picks up the book. 

The door to Ardyn’s room clicks shut.

“Hey!” Noct stands. He knows the staff locked up after them when Noct was going through his heat, but it’s not like he’ll be due again for a while. He heads to the door and tries the handle, but the door just rattles. “Mother _fucker,_ ” he hisses.

The best he can hope for is to wait until Ardyn gets back, but he can’t be sure how long _that_ will be. Not when Ardyn’s never been _gone_ before. Noct tries the door a few more times, and shouts through the crack in hopes that whoever barred the other side can hear, but nothing happens. Finally, he pushes away from the door and collapses on the bed. 

After a minute, he hears laughter from outside. He goes to the castle-facing window and jimmies it open. There are two members of Ardyn’s staff walking across the moonlit lawn, pressed shoulder-to-shoulder, their voices rising in the warm air. Above them, Noct can see the roof where he and Prompto had been drinking the night after the wedding, and long, deep gouges in the shingles at the ledge. That must have been where he fell. Noct gauges the distance: Hypothetically, if he were two times stronger and five times better at aiming, he could warp to the edge and then down to the ground again. This must’ve been where Ardyn had warped from when he caught Noct. Noct considers summoning a knife, and changes his mind. No use getting himself killed just because he got locked in his husband’s bedroom. There is only one way Noct could conceivably get from the window to the roof, and he isn’t looking forward to it. 

He waits until the staff disappears into the rose garden, and climbs up onto the window ledge. The moon is waxing, not yet full, but it’s enough that Noct can feel the call to shift tugging at his mind. He gives in to it, whimpering slightly as his bones adjust, and his back paws scrabble at the edge of the window. Right. He can do this. He just has to fling himself into empty space and hope he doesn’t hit the ground head-first. 

He bunches up the powerful muscles of his hindquarters, and leaps. 

He overshoots his estimated landing spot, of course. Noct’s claws dig into the shingles at the top of the roof, and he lets himself slide in an ungainly scramble down to the edge. There, he jumps down, landing hard on all four paws.

Noct’s senses are always a little stronger as a wolf. The scent of the gardens around him is almost overpowering, as is that of the fresh manure the gardeners had replaced that morning. Then there’s the constant sting of salt from the ocean, cooling dunes, and… 

People.

There are people in the rose garden. Their scent is faint, but Noct can sense them: Over two dozen at least, drifting into the center of the garden as though pulled by an invisible line. Noct thinks of the two people he’d seen walking off before he jumped out the window, and forces himself to change back. He unbends from his crouch on the lawn, dusts off his aching hands, and catches the silhouette of a woman disappearing into the bushes a little ways to the right. 

Even in his human form, Noct can feel the presence of people growing stronger as he walks into the garden. He has to stop once or twice to push himself up against a statue or hide behind a fountain as people pass, and he hears snatches of conversation: _Third one this year. Getting worse. Can’t be helped, bless them._ His pulse thrums in his throat as he approaches the center where the sparring circle lies.

Just before he reaches the circle, he stops. He struggles to keep his scent muted, but he can feel it slipping away from him, and he steps into a hedge of yellow roses, ignoring the scrape of thorns on his arms. 

There are omegas in the sparring circle. Noct recognizes them, in a dull, distant sort of way, from the halls and gardens of the castle, and even sees the scarred omega standing off to the edge with a few girls. They’re all silent, watchful, gazes set on the two men in the center of the circle. 

Ardyn stands before Kieran, the omega from that afternoon. He’s still wearing his day clothes, but there’s something… off… about him that Noct can’t quite place. It’s like he’s watching a movie, but the actors have all been replaced by lookalikes. Or like waking up in his room and realizing the furniture has been rearranged. He pushes down the urge to change, to run, and watches Ardyn place a hand on the omega’s shoulder. 

“Last chance,” Ardyn says. When he speaks, Noct shudders and edges forward.

The moonlight on Ardyn’s skin makes him look pale and washed-out, a spectre of the man Noct knows. When the omega nods, Ardyn lifts his hand, and Noct finally sees it. 

Ink-dark blackness spreads out from the veins in Ardyn’s forearm, tracing up to his hand like a lightning bolt out of a clear sky. He places his hand over Kieran’s scent gland, and the omegas closest to Noct tense, hands clenching. 

When Kieran screams, it comes out as a wail, high and keening and somehow inhuman. 

Noct stumbles out of the rosebush. The omegas in front of him turn, eyes wide, but their cries of alarm are drowned out in the endless shriek of the man standing before Ardyn. 

“The fuck are you _doing?_ ” Noct shouts. He lunges towards the center of the circle, but two omegas grab him by the arms, trying to drag him back. He wrenches out of their grip. The others in the circle have noticed, and are heading towards him, brows furrowed, their steps sure. Kieran’s shout dies out to a whine, and his knees buckle. When Ardyn catches him, lowering him to the ground, Noct can see that the blackness in his veins has spread to the other arm as well. 

Ardyn turns to the sound of the commotion, and his eyes are black pits in his pallid face. 

“The _fuck,_ ” Noct gasps, as he’s held by another set of arms, “did you—“

“Oh, Noctis,” Ardyn says. When his lips part, there’s only darkness there, no hint of teeth or tongue. Noct snarls deep in his throat and tries to summon a sword, hoping that will deter the men and women trying to hold him down. 

The magic in his blood crackles and dies. Ardyn takes a step forward, and all awareness of Noct’s magic leaves him, lost behind a nauseous roll of his stomach and an itch in his skin. When Ardyn moves, the ground beneath his feet sinks unnaturally deep. 

Noct grits his teeth and surges forward, transforming with a yowl of pain. The omegas surrounding him are thrown back, and he bares his teeth, tensing his jaws for a strike as he lunges—

Ardyn holds out his hand. For an instant, he shifts, and Noct sees a massive, yellow-eyed form looming over him, rounded shoulders the size of his own wolf-shape, claws settling perfectly into the dents in the earth. Noct falls as though he’s struck an invisible barrier, and he thinks, _This is what Prompto saw, on the roof. This was what made the marks in the shingles. It’s Ardyn. It’s Ardyn._

He tries to lunge again, and the vision of the great wolf flickers, leaving Ardyn’s human form behind. His hand is still outstretched, and he lowers it slowly. As he does, pressure pushes down on Noct’s back, twisting at his skin, making his blood burn and his bones ache. He can’t move, can’t even growl when Ardyn lays his hand on his neck. At his touch, all of Noct’s fear and fury and confusion is cast aside with the knowledge that he’s in the presence of an alpha, an alpha who needs to be _obeyed._ Pain laces across his back as Noct feels his body changing back against his will, muscles knitting together, fur shrinking, nerves screaming, until he’s human again, panting heavily under the weight of Ardyn’s displeasure.

“Leave us,” Ardyn says. 

“No,” Noct whispers. He looks into the hollows of Ardyn’s eyes. “No, I don’t—“

There’s a growl in Ardyn’s throat, low as thunder, and Noct flinches. The omegas around him are slowly filing off: Two of them pick up the unfortunate Kieran, and as he passes, the black handprint over his scent gland is stark over his shirt collar.

At last, Noctis and Ardyn are alone. For a minute, all Noctis can hear is his own breathing, the crunch of gravel under Ardyn’s impossibly heavy boots, and the roar of the sea.

“It’s a shame,” Ardyn says, brushing Noct’s bangs aside as Noctis stares, wild-eyed, into the shadows of his face. “I _liked_ you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's where we start to get answers!  
> And where shit gets real. Buckle up, buttercups!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter kicked my ass! Anyways, here we go!

Noctis tucks his game controllers in the middle of his suitcase, nestled deep in the comfortable padding of his hastily-folded clothes. He closes his suitcase, and leans over so that he can draw the zipper around the side. 

The zipper makes a sound of claws dragging on ceramic tiles. 

“Noct.” Gladio is in Noct’s room, standing in the way of where Noct needs to go. Not, Noct amends, that this was ever really _his_ room. His room is back in the Citadel. Back home. 

“You can’t tell me that’s the whole story,” Gladio says. Noct stuffs his socks in the front pocket of his suitcase. Outside, night is verging towards morning, the horizon going a muted blue-grey against the sea.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Noct says. “Things have been weird for a while. The king and I agreed that it isn’t working out, so I’ll come back when I’m ready.”

There is a cat on the bed. Noct frowns and pushes it off. 

“You’ve seemed pretty cozy lately,” Gladio says, watching the cat try to twine around Noct’s ankles. Noct shakes his foot and steps around it. “You can’t just let it go because you had one argument. What happened?”

Noct looks up at his Shield and smiles. His cheeks feel oddly warm, and he doesn’t understand why his hands are locked so tight on the handle of his luggage. He’s fine. This is fine. This is what he wanted.

“Nothing happened,” he says. “I’ll come back later. And if I’m already pregnant, then I don’t have to come back at all.” He shrugs. Gladio places a hand on his cheek, and his fingers come back wet. 

“Noctis,” he says again. “I’m gonna talk to the king, alright? Get this sorted out.”

“ _No!_ ” Noct grabs Gladio’s wrist. His hand aches, and in the distance, tinny and faint like a ringing in his ears, he thinks he can hear the ocean. “No, he’s probably asleep. Ignis is coming tomorrow to drop off his reports, so we can go back with him. We don’t. Have. To talk. To anyone.”

Gladio stands in silence, and gently pries Noct’s hands from his wrist. There are small red marks where Noct’s nails have cut into the skin.

“Wait here,” Gladio says. His voice is low, the way it gets when he’s talking to his little sister or to Talcott, and Noct twists around him before he can get to the door. Noct wrenches the door open, and as Gladio lunges for him, slams it shut. There’s a bar on the outside of the door. Noct isn’t sure why, but it makes him think of sitting on Ardyn’s bed in the dark, listening to a click of a lock, and his stomach twists uncomfortably. He slams the bar down. The door rattles when Gladio throws himself against it.

“You’ll be safe here,” Noct says, but his voice is lost in Gladio’s furious cursing. He brushes the tears from his eyes. He doesn’t know why he’s crying. This is his decision, and it’s not like he doesn’t miss home. Gods, Noct misses so many things. Prompto. Ignis. His dad. The Scourge in his blood. 

The Scourge in his…

The roar of the ocean is so close that Noct wonders why he can’t feel the spray of the water. He turns to the window behind him. The beach house is a shadow against the moonlit ocean. A woman stands at the door. Her dark hair flows in a halo about her shoulders, and when she moves, the shadows that play over her skin shift like oil. She lifts a hand to him. 

_Follow._

Noct takes the stairs two at a time. Far above, he can hear the door of Ardyn’s room groan, but he doesn’t hear the thud of footsteps.

He’s oddly grateful for that. 

The staff he passes in the halls won’t meet Noct’s eyes. Noct doesn’t blame them. He can’t meet theirs, either, which is a little strange, but he doesn’t want to question it. Not really. He lifts his hands and uncurls his fingers, and there are little red crescent moons on his palms. Moon. Something about the moon is important. Something he needs to remember. Something terrible.

The sound of the surf on the beach is so _loud,_ even indoors. Noct squints his eyes shut and tries to push it out. The wind has picked up, pressing against the side door as Noct steps out onto the soft grass beyond the castle, and whitecaps churn the ocean into a mess of foam.

“Highness,” says a young man, when Noct has made it ten feet across the lawn towards the beach. “You should return to your room.”

Noctis keeps walking. He makes a straight line for the house, cutting through wildflowers, ferns, then sand and thistle that bites at the hem of his pants. The high wind brings the sea with it, and Noct’s skin is clammy and damp by the time he reaches the beach house steps. The woman turns to walk through the door, and Noct pushes aside another person trying to speak to him. So many people want to speak to him tonight. 

He climbs up the worn steps of the beach house, and heads through the open door. The woman’s feet disappear up the winding stair to the second floor. Noct follows her. 

The second floor of the house is empty. Noct pads into the bedroom, where a tapestry hangs on the wall opposite the bed. There used to be words there, but now all Noct can see is a roiling ocean, towering over two wolves on the shore. 

The woman in the waves whispers to him, and Noct closes the distance, touching his fingers to the glass preserving the tapestry. She speaks again, too soft, and Noct watches the movement of her lips.

“No will to bind you,” he says. 

 

\---

 

It comes to him in waves. Ardyn’s fingers on his cheek, the heavy pressure of his will on Noct’s mind, fear driving away all hope of control. The grit of the sparring circle digging into Noctis’ knees. The smell of death on Ardyn’s skin, thick with rot but dry, like the hollowed-out husk of a tree.

“I won’t tell,” Noct says. He’s pleading, which Noctis knows, now that his hands are on the glass in the house by the sea, is wrong. He should never have to plead. His gaze fixes on the eyes of the smaller wolf on the shore, the one that faces the goddess in the waves. There is something familiar in the darkness of its fur, the lopsided stance of its back legs. The cold blue of its eyes.

Noctis remembers.

“Failure comes in cycles, Noctis,” Ardyn says, standing before him while Noctis tries to rise in the center of the circle. “I admit, when an omega is sent to me, I think, _Ah, here’s the one._ ” He runs his fingers along Noct’s cheek, tilting his chin up. “And every time, I am disappointed.”

“Okay,” Noct says. He tries not to let it sting, but it does. He hunches his shoulders. “So I’m not good enough. I knew that.”

“It’s not a matter of being good enough,” Ardyn says. “It’s… Oh, Noctis. Do you think immortality is a blessing from the gods? I have waited two thousand years. Two _thousand_ years, for the line of Lucis to throw out the one person strong enough to end this. The King of Light.” He chuckles, but the sound is nowhere close to the fond laughter Noct is used to. There’s an edge to it, mocking and cold. 

“But _you’re_ the King of—“ 

“Do I look it, Noctis?” 

Black ooze trails from Ardyn’s eyes, creeping to the corners of his mouth. 

“Gods, it’s exhausting,” Ardyn says. He sits down, not minding that Noct is still straining to move, to rise from his knees. His shoes scuff at the gravel of the sparring circle. “I don’t know why I bother with any of it, sometimes.” He runs a hand through his hair. “But the Astrals promised me an omega who could overpower even the Scourge in _my_ blood, let alone yours, so I set up this little arrangement—“

“Wait.” It hurts to breathe, but Noct has managed to lift himself about an inch on his toes. “I’m. I’m so lost.”

“Oh, you thought that we were _always_ like this, I expect,” Ardyn says, flapping a hand in his direction. “Do you know what I did tonight, to that poor fellow who was bonded against his will? I infected him with the Scourge.”

Noct loses his grip, and sinks back down. 

“Don’t look so shocked,” he says. “All it did was… change him. Cut off the bond, gave him renewed strength, and, oh, yes. I suppose you could say it made a wolf out of him.” Ardyn’s smile is stained with the blackness on his tongue. “Only the royal line has the lycanthropic gene? What romantics the Caelums are. There would be no wolves, no true wolves, as you know them, without the Scourge. Oh, by the time it gets to, say, your dear friend Prompto, it has mutated into something harmless. But _true_ wolves, like you or I? There’s always a _pinch_ of the daemon in us.”

“You’ve been doing this to everyone,” Noct says, dully. Ardyn shrugs.

“Driven by pity, perhaps, and it passes the time. Of course, it would cause a scandal if they left, so they live here after it's done.”

“Behind the wall.”

“Look at you, clever boy.” Ardyn sighs. “Oh, I wish I didn’t have to do this.”

Noctis can feel the fear creeping in again, and the pressure builds, boxing him in on all sides. “You don’t… have to. I won't tell.”

“What a waste,” Ardyn says. “I thought you might… well. The Astral’s chosen would never fall to his knees at a touch of power.” The shadows in his eyes spread, and he shifts, once again a monstrous creature with yellow-gold eyes and fangs that drip black ichor. “The chosen wouldn’t cower in fear. The chosen wouldn’t bare his neck for the taking.”

The wolf lunges, and Ardyn is kneeling before Noct in a swirl of red magical fire, holding Noct’s head in both hands. His eyes are almost rueful. 

“The chosen would not _forget._ ”

 

A gust of wind makes the windows of the beach house tremble and clatter. Noct removes his hand from the glass, and the tapestry is as it always has been: An ancient, yellowing weave, stitched with care by an omega long dead. 

Noct sighs and pushes away, and stops before the figure of the goddess on the bed. 

She smiles at Noctis, lifting one hand to a bed post. Where she touches the wood, rot forms, the post crumbling away in the lines of her fingers. 

“King of Light,” she says, and her voice is the ringing of a low bell, echoing in Noct’s mind. “Your strength comes with the sun.”

Noct looks to the window. It’s still dark, but he can see the hint of light in the clouds at the horizon, the promise of dawn. When he looks back to the bed, it’s empty. The bedpost crumbles into pieces on the rumpled sheets. 

Downstairs, Noct hears the thump of boots at the doorway. 

He reacts without thinking. He bursts through the bedroom door, whirls down the stairs in a frenzy of claw and fur. Ardyn stands at the doorway, his face clean of the Scourge, shock in his eyes, as Noctis, fully transformed and snarling with rage, barrels into him. 

Thick, sharp claws rend at Ardyn’s flesh even while a small part of Noct, tucked away behind the fury and terror, winces at every slash. Ardyn changes within a breath, and Noct scrabbles at his massive ruff, paws digging into his neck as the wolf over twice his size tries to fling him off. The skies have opened since Noct went into the house, and his claws slip on Ardyn’s sodden fur as rain batters the dunes. He loses his grip and goes skidding on his side in the wet sand. Ardyn pads towards him slowly, and Noct looks to the horizon. 

He has to wait for the sun. He isn’t sure how. Isn’t sure _why._ He wishes that the goddess could’ve been more helpful, maybe given him a quick run-down of how to do this, but in the meantime, Noct assumes he’ll just have to hang on. 

He lunges again, and Ardyn smacks him down. Just as before, Noct can feel the transformation happening, the wolf being stripped from him, and he sinks to a knee.

“Curious,” Ardyn says. Just that. _Curious,_ but there’s a waver in his voice, a hint of doubt, and Noct’s single, throaty gasp of laughter is lost in the drumming of the rain and the howl of the wind. In the corner of his eye, the whitecaps of the sea are starting to rise. 

_No will to bind you,_ the tapestry had said. Noct looks to the greying clouds over the ocean and slowly rises to his feet, bones screaming protest as the pressure of Ardyn’s influence pushes down. Maybe it helps that he can barely scent him through the rain, or that the sky is starting to lighten beyond the storm that churns the ocean behind them, but Noct feels better. More human. More whole. 

He thinks to the first night when he couldn’t use magic, the night that Ardyn had caught him on the roof. The next morning, in the sunlit bedroom, Noct had summoned lightning. He does so now, calling to the magic in his veins, and the rain sizzles and snaps as it comes close to the violet light snaking between Noct’s fingers. 

“That was a shitty fucking thing to do to someone,” Noct says, and he pushes himself forward, bringing his fist, and his handful of lightning, right into the side of Ardyn’s face. Ardyn staggers back, staring at Noct in open shock. 

“You’re not gonna do that again,” Noct says. He takes a step forward, and Ardyn retreats, but Noct grabs him by the collar, using his knee to his gut as leverage to pull him down to the sand. Clumps of it slide into Noct’s boots as they slip a few inches down the slope of the dune. The magic is building again, so full in Noctis’ skin that the rain hisses into steam before it even gets to him, so full that when he touches Ardyn, he can feel the Scourge trying to skirt around the warmth of his fingers. Ardyn’s lips part, and Noct can taste the anticipation in his scent as he kisses him, moving up over his lap.

He knows what he has to do. He's felt it since his heat, maybe even before. The urge to do the impossible, to do what Ardyn has refused him since their first night together. He breathes in Ardyn's scent, and digs at his high collar with his right hand.

“Do you want this?” Noct asks. “Or was that all bullshit, like everything else?”

Ardyn’s lips move, but no sound comes out. When he tries again, his voice is hoarse. 

“I do,” he says. 

Noct’s fingers are dry on Ardyn’s rain-slick skin as he jerks his head back, exposing the long column of his throat. Noct moves partly by instinct, partly by the magic humming in his blood, the sound of the goddess’ voice tolling through the roar of the waves and the hammering of the rain, and sinks his teeth into the tender skin of Ardyn Lucis Caelum’s scent gland.


	9. Chapter 9

The absence of pain hits Noct like a missing step on a stairway, an extra gasp of breath for a shout that never comes. Ardyn's arms wrap around Noct's waist, and he tastes blood on his teeth as a ripple of warmth rushes over them, encasing them in a pocket of sunlight against the battering sheets of rain. Ardyn gasps out a word that could be Noct's name, but it's lost in the overpowering brightness that makes Noct grit his teeth and squint down at the rapidly drying sand beneath them.

Two pairs of bare feet step into view, and a hand settles in Noct's hair. 

"You can let go," says the goddess of death. Noct reluctantly pries himself off Ardyn's neck, and Ardyn makes another desperate, broken sound, dragging him down. 

"Ardyn?" Noct asks. He brushes his fingers over Ardyn's jaw, but the immortal king does not respond, gaze searching frantic into the clouded sky. "Ardyn, are you... Is he okay?" He looks up, and the goddess smiles.

"A question that hangs on you, oh king," she says. Beside her stands a woman dressed in royal black and purple, her hair tied back in a severe bun, her neck bare and unmarked. She looks exactly like the picture of the first omega in the beach house, and when she sees Noct looking her way, she winks. 

"Little beast," she says, and Ardyn stiffens, his hands gripping Noct so tight that his lungs ache with every breath. "I've come to repay you for my house." 

She walks around them, kneeling at Ardyn's side, and places a hand on his forehead. Ardyn's eyes focus at last, and he looks at her with such grief that Noct has to turn aside. She speaks in old Lucian, soft and fast, her tones running contrary to everything Noct's tutors had taught him, and Ardyn whispers back.

"You must make a choice, Noctis," Etro says, and the hand in his hair curves to his chin, lifting it up. "When this is done, there will be no Scourge left within Ardyn, but there will also be none left with you. The moon will no longer call you. You will be as the weakest of your people, no longer able to harness the full power that the daemon within you provides. The wolves of the line of Lucis will end with you."

Noct shudders. Yes, the pain of transformation has always been a burden, but he loves the freedom of being a wolf, of running with Gladio down the long halls of the Citadel, of the strength that lies coiled in his body even as he curls up in his bed to sleep out the moonrise. The kings and queens of Lucis have always been wolves, from the beginning.

No, not from the beginning. Since the dawn of the Scourge.

 _Ardyn has waited for two thousand years,_ he thinks. Two thousand years, carrying the Scourge in his body, knowing that as long as he lives, the Scourge lives.

Noct sighs. 

"Alright," he says. 

The goddess leans down. "It will be a death, of sorts," she tells him. "But for you, my dearest disciple, I will make it brief."

As one, Etro and the first omega press their lips to the crown of their kings' heads, and Noctis knows knows nothing but the true, absolute silence of the dead.

When he wakes, the rain has made a puddle of muddy water under his and Ardyn's sodden clothes, and thunder shakes the air as it rolls across the sky. He braces himself on an arm and slips into Ardyn's side, bumping his nose against his arm.

"Fuck."

"Eloquent words for a chosen king." Ardyn's sardonic voice is so soft that Noct has to stare to make sure he isn't talking in his sleep. Ardyn sneaks a glance his way, and the smile he makes is more than a little rueful.

"My dear," he says, and shifts to his side, clearly as worn out as Noctis feels. "I fear I have made rather an ass of myself."

"Really?" Noct says. "You think?" He uses Ardyn's chest to lever himself up to a sitting position, and Ardyn grunts in discomfort. "So, is it over?"

"What is it the young people say these days?" Ardyn asks. "You tell me?"

"Close." Noct closes his eyes, trying to call his wolf self into being, and comes up empty. It's like going to a well for water only to find it's been moved altogether, and the loss of it makes Noct's breath catch and his hands shake.

"It's gone," he says. "Fuck. Ardyn, it's gone."

"Poor fools," Ardyn says. "Gods alone know what I'll do the next time an omega comes calling."

Misery twists in Noct's chest. He'd forgotten about the omegas of Ardyn's estate. "We'll figure out something," he says. "I'm gonna be king one day, after all."

"What a sight you'll be," Ardyn murmurs. "The first omega in history to mark their mate."

Noct looks down at him sharply. Ardyn's expression is carefully vague. "Do you mean that?" he asks. "About... being my mate?"

"Well," Ardyn says. He sits up, and slings a muddy arm around Noct's shoulders. "It seems as though I now only have one lifetime left. It would be a shame to let an opportunity like _this_ pass me by."

"I guess that makes sense," Noct says. He leans over to kiss the fresh mark on Ardyn's neck, and smiles at the shiver he gets in response. "So. Let's try this again."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it! Sorry for the terribly long wait. Next time, I'm going to try writing the ending FIRST and hope that solves this bad habit of getting writers block right at the climax of the story. Thanks to everyone for commenting and liking this! It's my first exploration of ABO and I'm excited to see how people respond to it!


End file.
